Kicking off your Sunday shoes: Footloose at the Mayfield, a review

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

Strange how it happens…. You’re all set to kick off your Sunday shoes for some rockin’ showbiz nostalgia, a young rebel with a quaint 40-year-old cause, and a truly contagious theme song.

And then, suddenly, you’re at the Mayfield. And in an early scene in Footloose, the 1998 musical adapted from the 1984 Kevin Bacon movie, a classic book, the Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five, is getting banned at a small-town high school. Wow. Musical theatre meets the news.

And more. A kid from the big city has ended up in a reverse Schmigadoon time warp in a town ruled by a conservative pastor, where there’s not only a curfew but dancing is against the law. In an era when time seems to be spinning backward, and the 1950s are starting to seem current on both sides of the border, Footloose has a startling new, energizing topical charge about it.

I’m here to tell you that Footloose is getting a kickass production at the Mayfield, directed by Kate Ryan and choreographed by Julio Fuentes. An exuberant cast of 19 take charge of a story set in motion when Ren, played by the terrific Ryan Maschke, is forced by straitened family circumstances to leave Chicago for a small-town when his father abandons him and his mom.

Welcome to Bomont (the name got a big laugh from the packed opening night crowd), where Rev. Shaw (Jay Davis) rules, and as the song has it, “you’ve got no disguise from somebody’s eyes….” The only legal after-school activity is the bowl-o-rama on the highway.

Ren is incredulous. “How do you live like this?” he asks his classmates. In Maschke’s captivating performance as the urban outsider in exile, incredulity nudges him into the role of rebel leader (by Act II at the barricades, so to speak, with the red jacket instead of that big red flag).

A great dancer and a singer with a lower range unusual for pop, Maschke makes the role their own with a layered, dramatically alert reserve and watchfulness — the sense of wounds concealed. For once, in Footloose,  Ren’s confession that he thinks about the pastor’s fretful, rebellious daughter Ariel (Alyssa Crockett) all the time actually makes sense. Since you don’t get a dance release party finale without it, a lot rides on Ren’s final confrontation with the preacher. Maschke and Davis give it some weight.

Ryan Maschke and Bryce Johnson in Footloose, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Ren’s moments with the hapless rustic Willard (the delightful Bryce Johnson) — the one bemused, the other an earnest learner — are among the comic highlights of the production. And so are Mama Says, (Willard’s spirited ode to the homespun wisdom of his mom) and his very amusing dance lessons.

Ryan’s production has considerable bench strength in a big cast of triple threats. And since the storyline is all about restoring dance to its rightful place in the universe, Fuentes not only puts them through their  paces in explosive, and often aerobic choreography — the youth population of Bomont are stunningly light on their feet — but individualizes the movement score (go, Willard!). And this gives the world of Footloose — the simmering containment of a younger generation under pressure — a dramatic and artful shape.

It’s a cast of strong singers. And under Jennifer McMillan’s musical direction leading an expert five-piece band, the musical’s unusual assortment of original Tom Snow/ Dean Pitchford) songs, Jim Steinman’s Holding Out For A Hero, and the outrageously hummable title number by Kenny Loggins, come at you with brio.

In a fine ensemble, may I single out Daniela Bauer as Rusty, a comic character with big pipes? Andrea House and Patricia Zentilli, both wonderful singer/actors, give some dramatic heft to (respectively) the preacher’s much put-upon wife and Ren’s mom. Their trio with Ariel, Learning To Be Silent, a true musical theatre number (“I’m becoming a mime”), is poignant and lovely. The musical values and sound (designed by Harley Symington) are, as usual at the Mayfield, first-rate.

Lieke den Bakker’s double-decker set, framed in neon, is a cross between a radio dial and a bandstand, with an arched screen across which Mat Schuurman’s projections and video,  have a dance of their own. They view the town and the church from the outside, the way Ren sees them. A riotous selection of Leona Brausen’s costumes, both church-y and dance-y, adds to the experience. And Ryan sets her large forces expertly in motion through this world.

Footloose isn’t a heavyweight musical; it touches down lightly in fleet scenes. But it validates dance and the joy of movement in a catchy way. And, newly meaningful in Alberta, it speaks (and sings) to a particularly repressive, prescriptive moment in our history. With this new revival you may well want to throw your Sunday shoes in the air by way of solidarity with a musical that’s all about euphoria, throwing off the shackles, and hoping for something better.

That’s the spirit. A fun evening all round.

REVIEW

Footloose The Musical

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre

Stage adaptation by: Dean Pitchford and Walter Bobbie, based on original screenplay by Dean Pitchford

Directed by: Kate Ryan

Choreographed by: Julio Fuentes

Starring: Kendall Ackland, Devin Alexander, Daniela Bauer, Cameron Chapman, Alyssa Crockett, Jay Davis, Evan Dowling, Sarah Dowling, Kory Fulton, Andrea House, Bryce Johnson, Ryan Maschke, Jameela McNeil, Andrés Moreno, Mark Sinongco, Garrett Waschuk, Michelle Yu, Patriocia Zentilli, Tim Zvifel

Running: through June 14

Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca