THEATER REVIEW; Trading Math Class For Corsets And Minis - New York Times
Ginia Bellafante. January 10, 2007

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    Ginia Bellafante is disgusted with “High School Musical: The Concert.” She does not take any pains to hide that feeling. In her review of the event, she shares her experience of seeing the actors from the Disney Channel movie turn into incredibly poor models of success and individualism. The characters in the movie dealt with cliques that tried to hinder their choices and limit their interests, but they were able to find their own passion, theater, outside of the math nerd or basketball jock world. Bellafante enjoyed Disney’s “just-be-your-real-self message” and was shocked to see it lost entirely at the live performance.
    The concert, one of the many ways Disney has cashed in on the success of their movie last year, features most of the original cast members performing all of the songs from the movie, to a wild adoring audience of adolescents. What upset Bellafante most about the performance was not only way the lead female actors danced and dressed inappropriately both for their characters and their age, but also the fact that the concert was really just a way of launching each of the actors’ solo albums directly to their target audience. She saw straight through that marketing pitch, and is sure that the teens felt the same way.
    Bellafante notes at the end that it’s quite curious that Disney made a movie about students learning to love musicals, just as the company jumped back into the business of making them. I admit, put that way it does sound scheming. I happen to be in favor of the production of musicals and the cultivation of an attitude that they’re an enjoyable form of entertainment. It says something about the quality of the music that so many kids desperately wanted to attend a concert where the music was the central focus. The self-appreciation lesson is certainly an important one, but it seems that Disney’s emphasis was on the music, and with a concert, a theatrical adaptation, and a top selling album, that’s where they’ve been the most successful.