Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Four stars
When hip kid Ren blows in to small town Bomontfrom the windy city with his mother, as far as action goes, things aren’t exactly swinging. Dancing has been banned following a tragedy five years earlier, and anything resembling rock and roll is considered to be the devil’s work. Ren’s only salvation comes by way of Ariel, a local girl with a lot of baggage of her own. If only she wasn’t the preacher’s daughter, Ren’s life might well be worth making a song and dance about, whatever the law might say.
Herbert Ross’s original 1984 big screen version of Footloose may have just hit forty, but beyond the stone wash denim and chart bothering hit singles, original screenwriter Dean Pitchford and Walter Bobbie’s twenty-year-old stage musical looks very much like a play for today.
This is never overegged in Douglas Rintoul and musical director Richard Reeday’s new production, a collaboration between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Suffolk’s New Wolsey Theatre, which stays true to the highly charged euphoria of its filmic and musical roots.
Luke Wilson makes a charismatic Ren, matched ably by a similar star turn from Kirsty Findlay as Ariel. As each of Rintoul’s fourteen-strong cast of actor-musicians has their moment on Adrian Rees’ ever changing industrial set, Robin Simpson makes a poignant Reverend Moore, while Elizabeth Rowe as Ariel’s gal pal Rusty delivers a knockout Let’s Hear it for the Boy.
In a confection that puts the free expression of dance at its heart, choreographer Kally Lloyd-Jones rises to the occasion, as Wilson, Findlay and co cut loose an infectiously riotous display of shape throwing, all illuminated by lighting designer Jeanine Byrne’s suitably pinky blue palette.
As latter day music venues are forced to close due to noise complaints, while libraries remove books from the shelves or else hide them from view, today’s new puritans could learn much from Footloose. Its advocacy of freedom through music and movement remains a joy.
The Herald, July 26th 2024
Ends
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