Jack Black fanatics, have I got a show for you. Rock of Ages, the just-off-Broadway musical homage to Reagan-era rock-outs features the Greatest Jack Black Impersonation of All Time. I'm not kidding. Constantine Maroulis (a fourth-season American Idol finalist), may be the show's "star," but Mitchell Jarvis is the star. No doubt Jarvis is consciously aping Black's bug-eyed rocker persona to play Lonny, the show's postmodern narrator (he's constantly reminding us we're watching a musical), but he does it flawlessly. He also resembles Black enough that, I thought it was the comedy superstar himself at the New World Stages, acting alongside the guy who finished sixth on American Idol.

Funny, because Kyle Gass, Black's partner in Tenacious D, had a role in the show's LA run, but had to leave to record the new D album. It's too bad, because seeing Gass on stage with off-Broadway Jack Black would have been a hoot. The show goes down on the seedier side of LA's Sunset Strip circa 1986, and it features the kind of boy-meets-girl story that's hard to not even get the slightest wee bit attached to -- especially when the story's told through the classic lyrics and hooks from hair-metal bands like Journey, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Styx, and Twisted Sister. But again, it's Jack Black Mitchell Jarvis, with his dancing eyebrows and extreme pronunciation, that'll have you rubbing your eyes.
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