Schoolhouse Rock Live!

Insight on the News, Sept 4, 1995 by Jeff Sipe

In the early seventies, Manhattan ad man David McCall experienced the universal parental epiphany: His son could recite TV jingles word-for-word, but not his multiplication tables. The frustrated father reasoned that catchy tunes and jazzy animation might help the boy and millions of other children put their school lessons to memory.

The result: Schoolhouse Rock, a series of three-minute animated skits that ran on ABC Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1985. "Just a Bill," "Unpack Your Adjectives," "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" and 40 other segments taught American youth civics, English and math. Schoolhouse Rock also chalked up four Emmy Awards for its creators, Tom Yohe and George Newall.

Now, under the aegis of Theatre BAM in association with Move On Productions, a group of theater graduates from Northwestern and DePaul universities have transformed about half of the public-service spots into Schoolhouse Rock Live!, a rollicking, robust stage show playing off-Broadway in New York. Kids -- and their parents -- have been packing the house.

Schoolhouse Rock Live! ran for two years in Chicago, first as cabaret at the Cafe Voltaire and then at the Body Politic Theater. More of a revue than a musical, the show loosely follows the travails of Tom, an engagingly nerdy grade-school teacher agonizing over his classroom debut. When Tom's five alter egos show up in his living room, the fun begins.

Eschewing any pretensions beyond pure entertainment, this divertissement showcases budding talent: Thomas Mizer as Tom, with Melissa Hartman, Dina Joy Bird, Joseph Beal, Amy L. Hansted and George Keating rounding out the cast. But the show's strength is also its drawback: There's no comment or reflection on television's role in American culture. Perhaps for a generation that has grown up in the constant glare of the cathode-ray tube, television is American culture.

Nevertheless, New York audiences have taken to Schoolhouse Rock Live! with gusto. The 20- and 30-somethings who packed a recent performance sang along with little prompting from the actors, and audience members nabbed for on-stage antics went willingly. There's no denying the charm of "My Hero, Zero" -- "Why, we could never reach a star without you, Zero" -- or the "Great American Melting Pot," in which Lady Liberty, cookbook in hand, creates a multicultural stew.

Schoolhouse Rock Live! includes some cursory nods to current affairs. There's a joke about "Bill" in the prologue to "Just a Bill," a number explaining how legislation makes its way up Capitol Hill. And when Tom, after nearly 90 minutes of singing and dancing, finally gathers up the courage to head to school, a member of the cast warns, "Don't let the metal detector scare ya." For the most part, though, the show is refreshingly free of political correctness, even in numbers with titles like "Sufferin' Till Suffrage."

Can children still learn something from Schoolhouse Rock Live!? They might have to listen to a recorded version several times, but who knows -- there's something to it when Dad asks, "Can you recite the preamble to the Constitution?" and Junior responds, "Recite it? I can sing it!"