FOOTLOOSE
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Simi Valley Cultural Center
Through May 14
RECOMMENDED
Songwriter turned screenwriter Dean Pitchford took the gist of a 1980 news story about high school students challenging an 80-year-old ban on dancing in their small Oklahoma town and turned it into a script for the hit 1980s film, Footloose. Further success followed in 1998 when the film was adapted into a Broadway musical, with a book by Pitchford and Walter Bobbie, music by Tom Snow and several songs from the movie by Pitchford, Kenny Loggins, Eric Carmen, Anne Wilson, and others.
In this stellar production, co-directors Barry Pearl and Michelle Elkin, with Elkin doing double duty as choreographer, have assembled a gifted cast that is as committed to the incongruous storyline as it is to an earnest portrayal of teen angst, inter-generational conflict, young love, and the redemptive power of music and dance. With an ensemble skilled at delivering assorted lyrics as well as Elkin’s exuberant and at times acrobatic dance moves, the show is a toe-tapping delight. From the looks on the cast members’ faces and the drive in their steps they looked like they were having a blast. You may have one too.
After his father deserts him and his mom, Chicago teen Ren McCormack (Thomas Whitcomb) burns off his anger dancing at local clubs. Broke and unemployed, Ren’s mom Ethel (Renee Cohen) relocates them both to the small town of Bomont in an unspecified rural state where they move in with Ethel’s sister and brother-in-law. City boy Ren’s ire only grows as he gets teased and bullied by his new country neighbors, but when he learns the town has outlawed dancing, his fury gets turbo charged. Reverend Shaw More (Paul Panico), a pillar of the community and the force behind the ban, is at wit’s end with daughter Ariel (Hannah Battersby), who, along with her put-upon mother Vi (Ronna Jones), chafes under Shaw’s rising severity. Ren finds a kindred spirit in Ariel, and they join forces to challenge Rev. More’s dance damnation and find solace in each other’s arms.
Played as thematic background music in the movie, cast members now perform the tunes, giving them a deeper and cathartic meaning for the character to whom they are assigned. Whitcomb’s buoyant rendition of “I Can’t Stand Still” and his tender duet with Battersby, “Almost Paradise,” reveal the vulnerability behind Ren’s bravado. Jones, Cohen, and Battersby lament their characters’ subservient status as women in the melancholy “Learning to Be Silent” – though Battersby’s part leaned toward the flamboyant. Jones also stands out with a haunting solo on Vi’s plea to Shaw for moderation in “Can You Find It In Your Heart?”
Tyler Marie Watkins as Ariel’s best friend Rusty rips it up on “Let’s Hear It For The Boy,” aided by the comic antics of her childhood crush and Ren’s best friend Willard (Andreas Pantazis). And when Lily Targett as Urleen, and Megan Vargas as Wendy Jo – more of Ariel’s homegirls – join Watkins on a sultry rendition of “Somebody’s Eyes,” a critique on small town gossip, the trio are a force of nature. While Battersby jumped ahead of musical director Jeffrey Gibson’s stalwart sextet on the ensemble piece “The Girl Gets Around,” she acquitted herself with her lead on “Holding Out For A Hero,” with robust backing from Watkins, Targett, and Vargas.
While the musical eschews darker moments from the film, such as the neo-fascism of one taut scene, there are still plenty of distressing themes to go around — parents losing children, the stifling of women’s voices, domestic abuse, religious contradictions. There is also plenty of humor, mostly from the audacious dancing and roaring voice of Pantazis who, as Willard, can deliver simple but sage advice in “Mama Says (You Can’t Back Down)” – backed up by the melodious trio of Hunter Uliasz as Bickle, Noah Heie as Garvin, and Casey Ryan as Jeter – but gets tongue-tied any time he is around Rusty. Directors Pearl and Elkin get great musical and dramatic performances from their cast, such as Panico’s conflicted preacher, Whitford’s abandoned Ren, and Battersby’s confused Ariel. Maybe their characters can be salvaged by a little dancing – what could it hurt to just cut loose?
Simi Valley Cultural Center, 3050 E. Los Angeles Street, Simi Valley; Fri-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; Sat., May 6 & 13, 2 p.m.; through May 14. https://simivalleyculturalartscenter.thundertix.com/events/209730 (Running time 2 hours, 30 minutes, including 15 min. intermission)
