The Altar Boyz Raise the Praise

By Vickie Chow

As a child of the ‘90s, I was reared in an era when jeans were flared, track pants were tearable, and the domineers of pop music came in harmonizing quintets of prepubescent spikey-haired boys. Needless to say, it was much to my delight that the popular Off-Broadway musical comedy, Altar Boyz, was going to be tackled by the Arts Club Theatre Company on the Granville Island Stage. The musical depicts a Christian boy band hailing from the Midwest who are on the last leg of their “Raise the Praise” tour. With the unrelenting determination to spread God’s Word through catchy pop beats and synchronized dance moves, the band periodically looks through the “Soul Sensor DX-12”, a machine that magically gauges the number of burdened souls in the theatre, a number that the Altar Boyz make it their goal to lower down to a clean and sanctified zero by the end of the concert.

祭壇男孩高舉讚美

原文：Vickie Chow | 中譯：楊光



在我成長的90年代裡，穿的是喇叭牛仔褲或能一手扯下來的運動褲，而且在流行音樂裡稱王稱霸的都是一組組會五重唱、頭髮尖尖、青春前期的男孩子。所以，當聽說Arts Club藝術劇團將在Granville島劇院舞台上錶演出自百老匯、極受歡迎的音樂喜劇《祭壇男孩》時，我興奮不已。這篇音樂劇描寫了一組從美國中西部來的基督教男孩樂隊，正在他們「高舉讚美」巡回演唱會的最後一站。他們有著堅定不移的決心，要通過上口的流行音樂和同步舞蹈動作來傳播上帝的話語，而且據說樂隊會不時地透過「靈魂傳感器DX-12」，能神奇地看到劇院中擔重擔的靈魂數目，《祭壇男孩》的目標就是在演唱會結束前將這數目降到又乾淨又聖潔的零!