Singin' in the Rain, 26/04/2022

Music by Nacio Herb Brown

Lyrics by Arthur Freed

Screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Conducted by Grant Walsh

Choreographer : Andrew Wright

Director : Jonathan Church

This stage adaptation of arguably the greatest screen musical of all time dates back to the Chichester Festival, about 10 years ago, if memory serves, and was very well received from the outset.  It is not the same as the 1983 staging directed by, and starring, Tommy Steele, but a new version by Jonathan Church.   This current revival was, I suspect, meant to tour at least a couple of years ago, since it was originally seen in London in 2019, but we all know what happened next.  

As an adaptation, it's very faithful to the movie.  It uses the original screenplay as its book and the design echoes much of the film's appearance.  The songs are pretty much the same, certainly the main ones remain identical.  There's a new scene for Lena Lamont, which gives that character a solo number and a bit more stage time, and the ballet's 'story' is a little altered to something more abstract, rather than the hoofer-meets-gangster's-moll tale of the original.  The choreography is not Gene Kelly's, but much of the time, Andrew Wright echoes it consciously.  Echo it, though, I think is all he could do, because dancers of the spectacular ability of Kelly, Donald O'Connor or Cyd Charisse do not grow on trees, and that is, in the main, where the show feels a little hollow.

It's grossly unfair, of course, to compare most of these performers to those legendary stars, but that's the problem with something that resembles the original without being the original.  When Christopher Wheeldon created a stage musical version of An American in Paris, he produced something quite different from the film, yet which respected its spirit, so we were not looking for the ghosts of Kelly and Leslie Caron.  Here, it's very, very difficult not to, and at times the choreography looks like a toned down - a 'dumbed down' - version of Kelly's.  Where it works well, though, it's fresh and light.  The title number, which closes Act 1, has Kelly's joie-de-vivre, nicely delivered by Sam Lips, and the other number that worked particularly well was the "Good Morning" trio, very close to Kelly's original, yet just enough different so that tonight's performers could make it their own.  

There are more ensemble numbers than in the movie, as you'd expect from a stage show, and they're a bit of a mixed bag.  With a more limited scope than the original ballet, Wright's one is a little underwhelming, though the duo for Don and Kathy is appealing, but the "Good Morning" reprise which opens Act 2 is a sparkling little number.  The other problem I found was that the tap shoes were barely audible, unless there were at least six dancers on stage.  I thought that tap shoes were systematically miked, à la Riverdance, these days (although I concede that doing that for a number basically danced in water could be just too dangerous), but if they're not here, they should be.  Watching dancers do a tap number and not being able to hear the tap is just odd.  

Lips, as mentioned, is good, a strong singer and dancer, and with the charm for the part.  Charlotte Gooch's singing voice is a little sharp for my tastes, but she played Kathy with a nice directness and simplicity.  I felt Ross McLaren's Cosmo was underpowered, both as a singer and a dancer.  Neither "Make 'em laugh", not "Moses Supposes", which are two of Cosmo's principal numbers, really dazzled.  Faye Tozer, on the other hand, was excellent as the outrageous Lena Lamont, and the additional scene, in which she reflects dolefully on the dead end of her relationship with Don, was a hoot.  The band, directed by Grant Walsh, delivered the score with plenty of verve, and on the whole, it was a fair evening's entertainment.  But it does not match the sheer joy and exhilaration of the movie.

[Next : 29th April]