FOOTLOOSE


Latchingdon Arts and Drama Society at the Tractor Shed
16.04.10



Footloose the Musical was sniffed at by the critics, but has had a successful afterlife touring the US and the UK, as well as becoming a popular high school musical.
Not hard to see why. It follows the lucrative furrow already ploughed by Grease, Fame, Saturday Night Fever, Smoky Joe's and Glee.
Peter Jones's lively production for LADS at the Tractor Shed, with energetic choreography by Vicky Bird, did its best with the paper-thin improbable storyline. Perhaps it's just as well there were no more plot twists, since not all the lyrics that drive the narrative were audible.
The one-horse town of Bomont has banned dancing following a fatal late-night teenage car crash. Cool Chicago sophisticate Ren McCormack [a stunning performance from Alex Martin] is the catalyst for a change of heart in the Reverend Shaw Moore – Robin Warnes having no difficulty convincing us as a stick-in-the-mud to whom all dance is anathema.
Elsewhere the accents were authentic only in the younger performers.
The songs ranged from the dire to the forgettable, though the young lovers [Martin with Marianne Davies excellent as the pastor's rebellious daughter] made the most of their duet – Almost Paradise – perched high on a bridge above the town. The most successful numbers were the harmony trios, Somebody's Eyes, Learning to be Silent, and the quartet Holding Out For A Hero.
But if, despite the best efforts of Kris Rawlinson and his band, much of the music was anodyne, there were compensations aplenty, mostly choreographic: the duet from Ren and good ol' country boy Willard [Dan Bavin], the opening number, answering the train, and the extended megamix dance sequence at the end, seemingly shrouded in the sulphurous smoke of eternal hell fire.
Great dancing, and palpable energy and enthusiasm, made for an impressive spectacular – one rural backwater bringing to pulsing life another.