Reviving an '80s energy without getting in too deep

Nostalgia for the '80s won't go away, even if those of us who came of age back then would like to suppress some of the memories. Musically, it was the era of schmaltzy rock anthems (remember Styx?) and guitar tantrums by rowdy suburban white boys. Fashion-wise, it was borderline traumatic. (Don't make us pull out our yearbooks.) Still, you've got to hand it to a decade that considered guys with painted-on jeans, heavily appliqued belts and fried Farrah Fawcett hair butch. Well, at least if they were twirling a guitar or swallowing a microphone.

That crazy, colorful female-mimicking (and exploiting) energy is on unabashed display in "Rock of Ages," the burst of retro adrenaline that had its world premiere Saturday at the Vanguard. If there's anything to the party tip that suggests playing music from the period when most of the guests were agonizing about prom, I suggest the producers contemplate flying in the 1,100 seniors who graduated with me from my public high school in the '80s (no need to pin down a date, thank you very much). This show is for all of us who still find ourselves lip-syncing down the supermarket aisles to Pat Benatar or sneaking Foreigner onto our iPods.

Everyone else will have to ask how much music video cheese they can stand to see theatricalized onstage. Note I didn't say dramatized, even though the book by Chris D'Arienzo tries to set up a "Rent"-like plot about a Sunset Strip music club threatened by a gentrifying German entrepreneur with little appreciation for the fact that, as the singers earsplittingly tell us, they "built this city on rock 'n' roll."

Sorry to say, but "Rock of Ages" lowers the bar, story-wise, for the jukebox musical, which is really saying something given the Broadway car wrecks of the past few seasons. As with "Mamma Mia!," the ABBA extravaganza that boosted the genre with its billion-dollar-and-climbing worldwide box office, the action is merely a pretext for another karaoke-inducing hit.

So when the conveniently named Sherrie Christian (Laura Bell Bundy) leaves Kansas to make it big as an actress in Hollywood, her parents belt out Night Ranger's "Sister Christian." And after she encourages her cute co-worker, Drew (James Snyder), at the Rock of Ages club on Sunset to go for his dream, he hammers out Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock." Needless to say, when life reaches a crisis point for our heroine, she'll be serenaded with a rendition of Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie."