Rock of Ages, Palace, Manchester
Palace, Manchester: Critics were not kind to this mid-1980s LA-set, hair metal-inspired jukebox musical when it transferred from Broadway to the West End in 2011, largely dismissing it as puerile, wrong-headed and insubstantial. And yet it lasted there for more than two years, and has since reappeared in cities around the world, suggesting that audiences have a thirst for unapologetically insubstantial nostalgic musi…