Notice has been had on the ‘Nativity!’ series of movie musicals beforehand. But in 2017 a staged musical was put on the boards retelling that story of battling primary school pageants (the posh vs. the public). Guess who’ll win the contract to be made into a movie! (No one, that was a lie.)
Plagued with multitudinous tiny voices reverberating in ‘harmony,’ the best of the over two dozen pop & rock songs feature soloists and their inner struggles. “My Very First Day at School” for example. On the other stage left, however, “Our School Nativity” is a series of audacious auditions with sob stories (like in ‘A Chorus Line’), followed by the resentful, regretful “Dear Father Christmas” in which the kids heartfeltedly wish for better roles. The kids’ show, finally, is skippable. Before then the “Herod! The Rock Opera” is but a smattering of screaming, but the borrowed Andrew Lloyd Webber guitar riff sells it for me. Another quickie, “Review,” caught my ear, as the most horrible man in town savages the public school’s previous unassuming attempt. Yowza.