Charlotte Hyde: Review of School of Rock, captioned at Theatre Royal Nottingham

It seems apt that during Captioning Awareness Week, I was invited to watch a captioned theatre performance. 

Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham kindly invited me to see School of Rock on Thursday 18th November, with captions by Stagetext. 

School of Rock was a fabulous, eclectic mix of music and visuals. Based on the 2003 film of the same name, main character Dewey Finn (Richard Morse) sets out to make up his missed rent by impersonating his best friend Ned Schneebly, a supply teacher (Matthew Rowland).

Dewey Finn was played by Richard Morse and Ned Schneebly was played by Matthew Rowland

He takes on a teaching job at a private school and quickly realises he’s out of his depth. However, chaos ensues when Dewey accidentally overhears a music lesson and realises the children have musical talent. He decides to teach his class about rock music, forming a band with them to enter the Battle of the Bands competition.

Having never seen the 2003 film, I found School of Rock lived up to the hype. The children were incredibly talented, the jokes were well-timed and funny, and the musical score was fantastic. It had all the hallmarks of an Andrew Lloyd-Webber production in the best kind of way. 

The caption boxes were placed on the left- and right-hand side of the stage, meaning they were easy enough to read without any neck ache. Aside from a few instances of lag, the captions ran smoothly and in time with the dialogue on stage. Given the nature of live performance, a few lags are to be expected. However, the lags were so few and far between that when they did occur, they were hardly a nuisance. 

Having the character names available to read on the caption boxes was so incredibly helpful. In non-captioned performances, I often lose track of which character is which and resort to guessing games until I receive some sort of clarification. The captions greatly added to my enjoyment of the show and enabled me to follow the plot with ease.

As I wrote in my last article, the impact of the GBBO subtitle fiasco has been a lingering one. It was lovely – and frankly, quite refreshing – to be able to watch a theatre show and not miss anything.

This wasn’t my first ever captioned performance; I saw a captioned performance of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in the past, but this was many years ago.

The experience was enlightening. We were sat in the upper levels of the Theatre Royal Nottingham and I could still see the captions really well.

It was the first time I’d been able to fully experience a theatre show. There was no panicking when I missed a few words; no confusion over the plot; no straining my eyes to lip read the actors on stage. I was able to relax and watch the show with ease.

I remember thinking that I’d never see a ‘normal’ (or non-captioned) performance again, but that assertion didn’t work in practice. As there is usually only one captioned performance per show, it can often be difficult to work them around my schedule. However, seeing School of Rock last night has prompted me to actively seek out more captioned performances when I want to go to the theatre. 

You can find assisted performances at Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall under the ‘Access’ tab on the main menu of their website, or by following this link here.

There are captioned performances and British Sign Language interpreted performances available, as well as hearing loop facilities for hearing aid users.

The next captioned performance is the pantomime Robin Hood on Saturday 8th January 2022 at 2:30pm. There are also BSL interpreted performances of Robin Hood on Sunday 12th December 2021 at 1:30pm, Thursday 16th December 2021 at 1:30pm and Friday 7th January 2022 at 7:15pm. 

Disclaimer: Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall invited to watch School of Rock for free as a reviewer. I did not receive payment by TRCH for this review and my opinions are my honest thoughts.