Singin’ In The Rain

It’s a Splash Hit!

We were lucky to be amongst the full house of 1300 people at the first preview of Singin’ In The Rain on 4th February 2012. Director Jonathan Church came on stage to introduce the performance saying that tonight would be the first time they had run through the whole show in the Palace. This comes after the show’s critically acclaimed sell-out run at the Chichester Festival Theatre.  He needn’t have worried as the show was flawless and thoroughly deserved its cheering, standing ovation.

Adam Cooper and Scarlett Strallen

It’s 1927 and we are outside the Chinese Theater in Hollywood for Monumental Pictures’ premiere of “The Royal Rascal” with the dazzling silent movie stars Don Lockwood (Adam Cooper) and his leading lady, Lina Lamont (Katherine Kingsley). They are the golden couple, together household names even more famous than bacon and eggs. Don can’t walk the streets without being mobbed but squawkish Lina can’t be let near a microphone. She just doesn’t get it: ‘What’s wrong with the way I talk? What’s the big idea? Am I dumb or something?’ Well, if you have to ask, you know the answer. She’s a screen beauty but she can’t act, she can’t sing, can’t talk and she can’t dance. Don can use his fame to seduce anyone apart from the demure movie fan, Kathy Selden (Scarlett Strallen) who brings him down a peg or two by telling him as an actor he is just a shadow. Cosmo Brown (Daniel Crossley) is Don’s childhood friend who Makes ‘Em Laugh with his riotous comedy.

Singin’ In The Rain The Set Palace Theatre

The show captures the wonderment of a new era of technology, horseless carriages and synchronised sound to match the moving pictures. It’s the story of a great moment in motion picture history when the screen learned to talk. It’s still the age of silent movies but Al Jolson’s musical The Jazz Singer is about to burst singing and dancing onto the screen and movie mogul R.F. Simpson (Michael Brandon) is the highly strung studio boss pushing the change and struggling to have the first hit ‘talkie’. This their wet, tuneful and glorious technicolor struggle.

It’s 60 years since the eponymous movie hit theatres on 11 April 1952. The stage show has the same script as the film and, of course, the same songs, just in a different order. Gene Kelly is a tough act to follow with those mellifluous tones and dark-haired movie star looks. This is Adam Cooper playing Don Lockwood. Not Adam Cooper playing Gene Kelly. Adam played Don Lockwood and choreographed Singin’ In The Rain at Sadler’s Wells, London and Leicester Haymarket, in 2004. So it’s a part he knows well. Adam has clearly moved on since the Royal Ballet Company and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. He took the Don Lockwood role as a 10 weeks summer job and within about two weeks there was talk of it being put on in the West End. It seems like an easy transfer from Chichester’s ‘thrust’ theatre, which has the audience on three sides, to its new  home  on the ‘proscenium arch’ stage of the Palace Theatre.

Katherine Kingsley

Kathy Selden, Lina Lamont and Cosmo Brown have all the best lines in the show. When Kathy jumps out of a champagne tower and mimes her distaste for Don you can see how hard Scarlett Strallen is acting and then when she sings for the first time for the studio boss R.F. you can hear that she sings so sweetly.  Daniel Crossley’s routines are pitch perfect, he taps and cartwheels and is a whole heap of talent. The back projections of the Duelling Cavalier are burst out laughing funny and Katherine Kingsley deserves the loudest cheer for her scheming and comic book cut-out character Lina Lamont. Although the first scene drags, Sandra Dickinson as gossip columnist Dora Bailey dishing out her banana oil gossip is best as Ms Lamont’s Diction coach, Phoebe Dinsmore. 

David Lucas as the Diction Coach

As is David Lucas coaching the talkie stars on tongue twister nursery rhyme Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses.   The spell is a little broken with the Olga Mara/Syd Charisse burlesque dance number but it’s a dream sequence so we have to let that go. 

It’s a wow to see The Broadway Ballet which was billed in the movie as the most thrilling dance number ever staged. Choreographer Andrew Wright and set designer Simon Higlett put magnificent M-G-M on the stage and in all its glorious technicolor. The costumes are an explosion of raspberries, yellows and limes.  The dancers are superb and it’s hard to pick out anyone as it’s such a great ensemble cast but the mesmerising Jack Wilcox darts about and Sherrie Pennington is a beauty match up on the silver screen for Lina Lamont.

A word of caution. Don’t sit in the first three rows as you get bombarded with at least three waves of dry ice smoke and drenched twice in the rain. It’d be a good idea if the theatre gave souvenir sowesters to those in the front row – brollies are on sale in the foyer, of course.

Alan Greenhalgh at Singin’ in the Rain

The big numbers Good Morning, Make ‘Em Laugh, You Were Meant for Me had us tapping along. There was  so much goodwill in the air on opening night. We wish it continues and with a dood-loo-doo-doo-doo we walked out onto a snowy lane with a happy refrain, Just singin’, Singin’ in the rain.

www.singinintherain.co.uk

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Running Time:  2 hours and 30 minutes

Price: £16.25 to £87 Book Tickets here.

Singin’ In The Rain opens 15th February 2012.