Unexpectedly enduring as the ’80s smashes of Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, and Poison might be, it’s the debauchery of the era that fascinates most when looking at the glory years of American metal and hard rock.

Victoria-raised actor Kale Penny discovered that when preparing for the role of aspiring musician Drew Boley in the hit musical Rock of Ages. Born in 1989, the actor notes he wasn’t around when pop was ruled by reprobates who bought their hairspray and lipstick by the crate, and their drugs, condoms, and alcohol in bulk.

But he decided he’d better bone up after landing the lead in Rock of Ages, which is set in 1987, a time when fame-hungry rockers from across the continent were flocking to a Sunset Strip ruled by the glam-king likes of Ratt, W.A.S.P., and Guns N’ Roses. If you’ve ever read the Mötley Crüe autobiography The Dirt or seen The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, you can imagine his shock.

“I was quite surprised by the behaviour of the people of the era,” Penny admits with a laugh over a late lunch outside the Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island. “Specifically, the ones in L.A. in the ’80s. We watched a couple of documentaries about it, and it’s pretty dark—a lot of the excess that they were involved in. I don’t even want to go into detail because it gets kind of sickening. It was a time when they really felt invincible and took advantage of that. I respect what they did with their music, but they did a lot of stuff that wouldn’t be okay today.”

Billing itself as “The Totally Rad Musical Tribute to the ’80s”, Rock of Ages has scenes built around pop-metal hits by the giants of the ’80s, including Bon Jovi, Warrant, Extreme, and Mr. Big. Appropriately, the story is set in the fictional Bourbon Room in L.A. Penny’s Drew Boley is working as a busboy at the club when he falls for Sherrie Christian, a recently arrived Midwesterner hoping for an acting career in Hollywood. Both chase their dreams in a story where German developers are hell-bent on demolishing the Bourbon to help scrub Los Angeles clean of sex, drugs, and hair metal.

Given that sex and drugs were never more inextricably linked with rock ’n’ roll than during the ’80s, the production could easily have focused on the dark and depraved side of the era. Characters who are all about excess do pop up in Rock of Ages, with Penny singling out impossibly cocky Stacee Jacks as an example.

“The character that I’m playing, Drew, is kind of innocent—he has the dream of wanting to be a rock star, but I don’t know if he has the balls,” Penny says. “But there are characters in the show, like Stacee Jacks, who serve as the epitome of that attitude. We talked a lot in rehearsals about how there are two kinds of rock stars from this era: the ones that are living that lifestyle, and the ones that are trying to imitate that lifestyle.”

Rather than a particularly unsavoury edition of Behind the Music, Penny sees Rock of Ages as a tale of optimism. If you want something more, you can pick up The Dirt on Amazon or catch The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years on Netflix. As for the rest of you, get ready to bang your head to Twisted Sister’s immortal “I Wanna Rock” and hoist your lighters to Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”.

“One of the things that I like about Rock of Ages is that it’s not about debauchery,” Penny says. “There’s a lot of sexuality, but it’s more lighthearted and finds a funny way to portray that. That’s important in musical theatre, and theatre in general. It wouldn’t be appealing if it was just gross all the time. It needs to have some sort of positive aspect. I got to see the show in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, and I was surprised by how little drugs were part of the focus. An easy mistake would be to make it all about the partying and the drugs and the excess. There needs to be some heart there as well.

“And the heart,” he continues, “is definitely about believing in your dreams. Everyone in the show has a dream, or has had a dream. Some have accepted that their dreams won’t come true, and some are still fighting for them. That needs to be the most important part of the show. The idea of having a dream needs to rise above the excess, and I really feel that it does.”

Rock of Ages plays the Arts Club Theatre’s Granville Island Stage from Thursday (June 16) to July 30.