A quality, good time
‘Singin’ in the Rain’ a tour-de-force
The template for local theatre reviews is pretty basic.
If you’re gonna criticize, do it gently, and wherever possible, accentuate the positive.
It’s the same way Canadian critics review Canadian films and TV shows that wouldn’t warrant a second look across the border.
Be patriotic. Support the home team. Don’t kvetch.
So it is with great pleasure that I toss out this tired, condescending custom to pronounce “Singin’ In The Rain,” without toadying, one of the 10 best Drayton Entertainment productions of all time.
And that’s without having seen the rest of them.
It’s that good, a rare confluence of casting, production and source material gelling into a theatrical tour de force that deserves a wider audience than the 400 people crammed into St. Jacob’s Country Playhouse on Thursday afternoon. Set in 1927 Hollywood — and viewed through the prism of the 1952 movie on which it’s based — this rollicking, justly celebrated musical is a funny, nostalgic look back at an era that, in the ’50s, was viewed as quaint and familiar.
Silent movies, pratfalls, show tunes, the Charleston — come on, what’s not to like?
Best of all, with credit to set designer David Boechler, it rains — right there on stage, at the end of the first act — a torrent from the heavens while lead actor Timothy Gledhill soft-shoes his way around an iconic street light just like Gene Kelly in the Oscar-nominated movie.
You’re in a tiny St. Jacobs theatre, in the 21st century, yet the moment is transportive, unencumbered by time or space, eloquent and moving in its simplicity. The impact is surprising. From the vantage point of 2017, the flapper era and advent of sound in movies — 90 years in the past — is something most people no longer have a personal connection to.
If the film were remade today it would be set in 1992, the dawn of the digital age, and the conflicts would revolve around the futuristic Internet vanquishing old school media. Analog vs. Digital.
And yet the play feels as vibrant as ever, not only because its snappy show tunes and comic zingers still hit their mark, but because it thematically encompasses an age-old conflict: the way technological change creates disruption, comic and otherwise.
In this case, it’s silent movies replaced,
almost overnight, by the “talkies,” a trend that, in the play, jeopardizes the career of a beautiful, marblemouthed superstar (Jayme Armstrong) until a plucky newcomer (Kayla James) is hired to dub her vocals and save the film.
“Whaddo dey think I yam? Dumb or sumpin?” she grouses when the studio head threatens to blow the whistle on her gorilla-like verbal acuity. “I could siyooh!”
What impressed me is how veteran director David Connolly recreates the innocence of a bygone era with his Art Deco set, economical staging and the delicate frisson between actors, who wring genuine emotion out of a 65-year-old script and refreshingly refuse to overplay the jokes.
Well, except for bold, comedic Armstrong, a theatrical triple threat playing the exact opposite. But she has no choice. As the high-strung diva clinging to her career, her entire character is a walking punchline, based on the fact she looks like a dream but talks like Rocky the squirrel filtered through a Waring blender (now there’s a promotional quote).
When she opens her mouth to sing it’s the sonic equivalent of Elaine’s spastic dancing on Seinfeld, the braying yowl of a constipated sheep.
“Believe me, I don’t love her half as much as I hate YOU!” her onscreen paramour tells her as they prepare for their next love scene.
Infused with irony, warmth and a keen sense of invention, “Singin’” is a multimedia masterpiece, interspersing song, dance and comedy with vintage-looking film clips, starring the play’s actual cast, that humorously recreate the early magic of “talkies” and the silent films they replaced.
It’s the attention to detail that puts it over the top: the hilariously unsynchronized sound in the makeshift screen test, the smell (and feel) of the rain during the musical downpour, the way the leading lady’s dialogue fades every time she turns her head away from the primitive microphone, and amps back when she leans the other way.
As the debonair leading man who cringes at her presence but professes love when the cameras roll, Gledhill is like a young Rob Lowe: shallow, charming with a knowing wink as he proclaims “dignity, always dignity!” while flashbacks depict him getting tossed out of burlesque bars as a youth.
With his lantern jaw and swaggering pomposity, he’s a satirical scream.
And what’s a leading man without a self-deprecating sidekick, a singing, dancing, slapstick prone vaudevillian to telegraph jokes and boost the star’s ego to unflattering heights.
As he tap dances his way through one classic show tune after another, Kitchener native Jay T. Schramek — also the play’s assistant choreographer — is Ed McMahon to Gledhill’s Johnny Carson, Jerry Lewis to his Dean Martin, Sammy to his Sinatra.
The real find, though, is Drayton newcomer James, who boasts the appealingly nervous energy of a young Mary Tyler Moore as she tells off Gledhill’s conceited movie star with tremulous conviction, then slowly falls in love.
She sings, she dances, she acts. In as much as anyone can predict the future, it’s a good bet we’ll see her again.
In the end, people expect certain things from Drayton: consistency, quality, a good time.
What they may not expect is excellence of the kind that marks “Singin’ in the Rain,” a regional production that punches above its weight with style, wit and charm.
It is, on screen and off, a theatrical rainmaker.