Not only can she rock Princess Leia hair buns, but multi-instrumentalist Jana Jones can prove her worth as bandleader in rock ’n' roll-driven musicals, leading an ensemble in Jobsite’s Return From the Forbidden Planet, a co-production with Straz. Props also go to Jon Cho, who led the band for the equally rocking Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Both shows were hits, and the music had a great deal to do with their appeal. For Hedwig — with Woody Bond on drums; Cho on guitar and backup vocals; Amy E. Gray as Yitzhak on vocals, Jones on bass and backup vocals; and Spencer Meyers as Hedwig on vocals — the posse gave us tight performances of glam-rock-bedazzed rock opera while wearing black-and-leather Berliner street-urchin wear. For Forbidden Planet, the band — Jones, Bond joined by Mark Warren on guitar and Parker Wilkson on keys/synth — set a campy sci-fi mood with high-octane renditions of golden oldies.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.