Directed by Peter Jorgensen. Book by Chris D’Arienzo. Arrangements and orchestrations by Ethan Popp. At the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage on Wednesday, June 22. Continues until July 30.

Concrete balls. Steel jizz. Hard boobies.

Rock of Ages  isn’t big on sophistication. Sometimes it feels like a musical written by a 10-year-old boy; other times, like the work of a middle-aged man lost in nostalgia for his hair-metal youth, faux-satirizing or pining for a simpler time of sexism, cock rock, and ’80s excess.

Rock of Ages  confuses a relatively simple trick — slicing and dicing and congealing an ’80s playlist's worth of classic songs (Bon Jovi, Poison, Journey) into the basic shape of a musical — with cleverness. It winks so hard at the audience that its eyeballs fall out, and it believes that feigning self-awareness is the same thing as actually possessing it. One can’t be frustrated by the musical’s constant objectification of women if Jesus himself is holding up a cue card at the end justifying it, right? Adding to the list of its shortcomings, Rock of Ages also has a cursory understanding of the word meta.

The Arts Club’s production is entertaining, even if it’s not entirely successful. There are moments of truly unhinged joy, but for all the potential debauchery and deep-pelvic-thrust choreography, this Rock of Ages is a bit limp. That’s largely due to the central love story between Sherrie (Marlie Collins) and Drew (Kale Penny). Sherrie is a small-town girl who come to L.A. with dreams of being an actress. Drew is an aspiring musician cleaning toilets in the Bourbon Roo , a club on the infamous Sunset Strip. Dreams are dashed, rock-star bathroom sex is had, and there’s a whole subplot about gentrification (something that resonates deeply in Vancouver) that mostly goes nowhere. Ultimately the young lovers find a way back to each other.

Collins and Penny have fine voices but very little chemistry, and when they have to sing together, the blend just doesn’t work. Sherrie and Drew’s love story should be Rock of Ages’ beating heart, but it just flat-lines every time Collins and Penny share a scene. This makes many other performances stand out in sharp relief, but one actor quietly and confidently steals the show. Making her Arts Club debut as Franz, the young son of the German developer who wants to tear down the Bourbon and gentrify Sunset Strip, Paige Fraser is a genuine delight. The role is slight, a bit of a throwaway in other productions, but Fraser’s comic touches are gold and there’s a real liveliness to her performance. She makes the most of every second she’s on-stage, and she doesn’t even start Studio 58 until September. 

Breaking the fourth wall of this review, sort of, there was a small but significant moment of homophobia from the audience that feels important to address, and that the script itself is possibly complicit in, but which could easily be mitigated. The Bourbon’s owner, Dennis (Kieran Martin Murphy) and soundman/narrator Lonny (Brett Harris, also making a standout Arts Club debut), confess their love for each other in the second act, singing “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore." It’s played mostly for laughs (the aforementioned complicity) and then the characters come close to a kiss. As the actors held the moment, building a nice bit of tension, someone in the audience let out an audible “blech” sound, as if the suggestion of two men kissing was gross. It was honestly shocking, the energy sapped from the room, and this previously relatively safe space was transformed. If the kiss had then happened right away, the likely cheers from the rest of the audience would have felt like a wonderful moment of triumph over the jarring display of homophobia from that one person, but it didn’t. After almost two full acts of banging us over the heads with its heteronormativity, Rock of Ages can’t just let two men kiss.

Still, the actors themselves tried to correct the moment. I don’t know if it was planned or a spontaneous act of defiance and “screw you” to that audience member, but during the standing ovation, Murphy bent Harris back for one of those showstopper, call-the-chiropractor kisses. Rock of Ages ends by telling us, “don’t stop believing” and in the wake of Orlando, we can’t leave any expression of hate or intolerance unchallenged. Love is love is love.