A new stage adaptation of High School Musical opened at London’s Troubadour Wembley Park theatre this week, two decades after the Disney Channel film first aired, Rachel Chang writes in the Guardian’s Opinion section.
Chang describes the production as an immersive rendition that promises a new interactive element alongside songs from the franchise. It has already been staged in Salford this summer, where organisers extended the run because of demand, she reports.
The cast features returning names including McFly’s Harry Judd and Kaycee Stroh, described by Chang as the original film’s “pop-and-lock girl”.
Chang was the only journalist on the first movie’s Salt Lake City set in August 2005, when she worked as an editor for the US teen magazine Popstar!. She recalls that Zac Efron and Corbin Bleu taught her the Wildcats dance in the cafeteria at East High, the real school that shares the film’s name. In the gym one gloomy day, she watched so many takes of Get’cha Head in the Game that she eventually chose to sit outside in the rain.
At that time, Disney Channel movies debuted every other month and the production appeared low key, she writes. Then in her late 20s, she knew she was perhaps three times the age of the intended audience, and expected the film would be a niche kids’ release at best.
Instead, High School Musical premiered to 7.7 million US viewers, which Chang notes was Disney Channel’s highest-rated broadcast ever at that point. The soundtrack climbed the Billboard charts and became the No 1 album of 2006, while the film reached 100 million global viewers by the end of the year, she states.
A sequel was fast-tracked. By then, Chang had become entertainment editor at CosmoGIRL! and visited the more guarded set in St George, Utah, in spring 2007. Everything was bigger and more dazzling, she recalls, and Efron’s real-life romance with Vanessa Hudgens was a source of speculation. Chang says she spotted a clue in a Troy button pin on Hudgens’s bag, and that director Kenny Ortega invited her to sit in the chair next to him.
High School Musical 2’s US debut in August 2007 drew 18.6 million viewers, securing a Guinness world record as the most-watched US cable TV movie, according to Chang.
Her trip back to Salt Lake City for High School Musical 3: Senior Year, by then upgraded to the silver screen, was far more calculated, she writes. She was restricted to the studio where Hudgens was shot for a CosmoGIRL! cover, and only some of the supporting cast were brought over for interviews as she waited in a nearby coffee shop. The October 2008 US premiere marked the biggest opening for a musical film at the time, eventually taking in more than $250 million globally, she notes.
Some may roll their eyes at the trilogy, Chang writes, but many people devoured the sappy storylines and sang along to the earworms. She argues the formula translates as well on stage as it did on screen. The franchise previously became a London stage show in 2008, with a UK tour.
Chang credits the film with blending American high-school social hierarchy with the simplest of stories: a jock who moonlights as a theatre geek, representing what she calls the most universally relatable dilemma of embracing passion despite perception. She says it ushered in a new era of musicals, from Camp Rock and Descendants to Glee, Hairspray, Mamma Mia and Wicked.
The brand has expanded across Hallmark ornaments, Disney park parades, licensed high-school productions and the mockumentary High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which introduced the world to Olivia Rodrigo, she writes. It also features a long list of appearances on Saturday Night Live US, the most recent of which came just three weeks ago.
Rachel Chang is a journalist and author specialising in travel and pop culture. Her book Unforgettable Walks: 52 Places to Stroll Around the World is due to be published next year.
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