Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...The absence of young stars with personal needs clearly helped director Jeff Calhoun deliver a pumped-up, good-time dance party of a kid-friendly, Broadway-style show that delivers enough excitement and spectacle to give people a reason to drop the big downtown bucks and yet does not soup up the original material out of all high school recognition. This stage-musical version is a whole lot better than the movie and exceeds all reasonable expectations, given the source material."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...High School Musical won me over through the sheer speed, versatility, polish and outsized charm of its almost entirely young, attractive, wildly committed, 34-person cast."
Daily Herald
- Recommended
"...Bright and bouncy, sentimental and squeaky clean, it’s lighter than air and louder than it needs to be. David Simpatico’s book, faithfully adapted from Peter Barsocchini’s script, is as predictable as the characters are stereotypical. And its pleasant score of homogenized hip-hop and harmless synth-pop makes few demands."
Pioneer Press
- Recommended
"...The production is smooth and highly professional, especially deft at quick, skillful scene changes from classroom to cafeteria, to locker room, to gym, as the story proceeds through the school. Bouncy, attractive and talented singers and dancers fill the cast. One especially effective choreographic number finds the basketball team punctuating their song and dance routine with a skillful, speedy exchange of basket balls."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Any show that emphasizes the importance of the arts in public education while affirming diversity and declaring war on cliquishness gets my vote. And in its admittedly idealized way, David Simpatico’s script is dead-on in its take on teen identity crises and kids’ conflicting urges to defy authority figures and to win their approval."
Windy City Times
- Somewhat Recommended
"...High School Musical offers little that’s particularly memorable, and yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts because every part serves the show in an exceptionally tight way. It may not be art, but the craftsmanship is impeccable and the bountifully talented cast is ingratiating, although far too white for an Albuquerque public school. "
EpochTimes
- Recommended
"...While I didn't fall in love with the show, I found it extremely entertaining and I left the theater filled with energy (it was if the cast was able to transmit all of theirs to us, or perhaps it was all the fifth and sixth graders sitting in our section)."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...A buff cast of 34 executes Lisa Stevens’s halftime choreography with precision, Ken Billington’s lighting design could befit a Prince concert and the trendy headset mikes on the actors allow them to wail like the fate of Western civilization depends on it. But it’s mostly soulless and, worse, at times it’s boring. And by the end of the night, you may look in your wallet and realize you’ve just seen Bling Awakening."
ChicagoCritic
- Somewhat Recommended
"...I’m dumbfounded as to how and why such average, by-the-numbers material has become such a mega-hit? But it is, despite its being cliché ridden standard high school fare. Again, it makes no difference. High School Musical will become a major stage touring hit."
