By Ian Crowley, OCIS Grade 6
At the Ocean City High School, December 1st through 2nd, crowds cheered and clapped, whooped and hollered, as almost two straight nights of a sell-out crowd ensured that this masterpiece of a production would be remembered as one of the Intermediate School’s greatest plays come to fruition.
Summary of the Play
The event starts with all-star basketball captain Troy Bolton (James Craver) meeting Gabriella Montez (Natalie Argento), a girl he met while singing karaoke on a ski trip, who he just discovered recently moved to his school. They cause an upset at the school when they both audition for the High School Musical, betraying their clique’s “status quo”. While students are quite literally acting like animals in detention, roaring and hopping around, Troy’s dad, Coach Bolton, faces off with detention provider Ms. Darbus about how he needs his star players for practice – Friday is the championship game! The next day, as hopeful students line up outside Ms. Darbus’s class to audition for the musical, they are blown away by young Sharpay (Loralei Mullins), as she and her twin brother Ryan (Jeremiah Craver) perform “What I’ve Been Looking For”. Troy and Gabriella arrive too late to audition, but the show’s composer, Kelsi, plays the song for them anyway, and Troy and Gabriella sing while they believe to be alone, even doing so well as to be chanced with a callback from “Deranged Darbus”. Unfortunately, both of their cliques, the Jocks and the Brainiacs, feel betrayed by them once again not sticking to the “status quo.”
Their cliques collaborate to devise a plan to ensure that Troy and Gabriella won’t go through with the auditions. However, after Sharpay convinces Ms. Darbus to move the callbacks to the time of the math decathlon and basketball game, Troy and Gabriella’s cliques realize that there are things more important than trying to be cool, and devise a plan for Troy and Gabriella to be able to complete both of their events, plus the callbacks. Towards the end of the game, one of the students in the Brainiacs uses her laptop to shut off the electricity, and Gabriella and Troy rush to the callbacks. But when Ms. Darbus says that they still can’t audition because their too late, the entire school comes to their support, forcing her to let Troy and Gabriella do their callback. After they sing their hearts out performing “Breaking Free”, they get the part. While this is happening, the Wildcats and Brainiacs win their competitions, and the whole school comes together as winners.
All in all, this play was a fantastic performance by all the actors involved, making all of its audience become enticed by the storyline, compelled by the wonderful numbers performed by the students of OCIS, and amazed by the wonderful choreography pieced together by the fantastic director of the play and local teacher, Mr. Andrew Benfer. This play has very positively impacted Ocean City, generating extremely positive reviews from all of its attendees, and helping to bring the entire community as well as the student bases from both the Intermediate and High Schools together, and showing off a best in class media and theater facility.
See back stage and after-show party photos on our Facebook page…
