24th February – 1st March 2025 at The Gaiety Theatre, Ayr. Tickets available from https://thegaiety.co.uk/events/rock-of-ages-ayr-amateur-opera-company/ or by visiting or calling The Gaiety box office (01292288235). Tuesday’s performance will be BSL signed and audio-described.
Important Information
Evening performances Monday-Saturday begin at 19:30. On Saturday, there will also be a matinee performance beginning at 14:30. Tickets start from £20, which includes £3 to the Ayr Gaiety Partnership Theatre Restoration Levy.
Please note, Rock of Ages contains adult language and themes.
Sponsored by Beatbox Leisure and McColm Civil and Structural Engineers.
About the Show
Rock of Ages is a big, brash, energetic tribute to classic rock, to over-the-top ballads and fierce guitar, to the gritty glamour and rough energy of the Sunset Strip. This jukebox musical features 80s hits such as ‘We Built this City’, ‘I Wanna Rock’, and ‘Here I Go Again’.
It is 1987, and the fabled West Hollywood club the Bourbon Room is the seedy, sordid, vibrant heart of the Sunset Strip. The music venue has seen better days, but as run by chilled-out former rock impresario Dennis Dupree, and tended to by Dennis’s mischievous assistant Lonny, it is the essence of rock and roll. When bright-eyed young hopeful Sherrie Christan, a small-town girl who wants to make it as an actress, arrives in town, she bumps into Drew, a Bourbon Room busboy with dreams of rock and roll stardom. Love-struck Drew convinces Dennis to hire Sherrie, and the stage seems set for their romance. But when the Mayor of West Hollywood, persuaded by a couple of scheming German real estate developers, announces his intention to demolish the Bourbon Room and the entire gritty Sunset Strip, the stakes are raised. Dennis convinces rock god Stacee Jaxx, lead singer of megaband Arsenal, to play the band’s last show at the Bourbon Room, hopeful that the money raised will stop the building from being demolished. But Stacee, a man of massive charisma and massive ego, leaves destruction in his wake, sleeping with Sherrie and getting knocked out by his own band before the concert is over. In the midst of violent anti-demolition protests, Sherrie flees to a nearby strip club and Drew falls into the clutches of a boy band. Who can save the Bourbon Room, the young lovers, and the feuding Germans? Only Lonny, the “dramatic conjurer”, knows for sure.
From the book by Chris D’Arienzo, with arrangements and orchestrations by Ethan Popp, this Amateur production of Rock of Ages is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
History of the Show
The musical opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages on October 16, 2008 and ran until January 4, 2009. The musical then transferred to Broadway. Previews began March 17, 2009 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, officially opening on April 7, 2009. The Broadway production temporarily closed on January 9, 2011 and moved to the Helen Hayes Theatre, where it resumed performances March 24, 2011. The show closed on January 18, 2015 after 22 previews and 2,328 regular performances, placing Rock of Ages in a tie with Man of La Mancha as Broadway’s 32nd-longest running show of all-time.
The show’s band had significant stage time compared to other musicals’ bands and orchestra members. The band dressed in typical metalhead costumes, fitting with their role as Stacee’s backup band, and always on-stage. The drummer played inside a cage with a sign on it that read “Please don’t feed the drummer”. One of the original guitarists in the stage band, Joel Hoekstra, is a former member of Night Ranger (whose hit “Sister Christian” was performed in the show) and current member of Whitesnake (whose song “Here I Go Again” was also performed in the show). Another guitarist Tommy Kessler is also a member of the band Blondie.