Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rain In The Forecast
FSLT brings classic Gene Kelly musical to stage
In the days of silent movies, a leading lady’s beauty was enough. Her words, her songs, could be dubbed by a talented but invisible actress, and no one among her fans was the wiser.
That’s where the story of “Singin’ in the Rain” begins. Talkies are coming to Monumental Pictures, and the great romantic team of Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont have a problem: When Lina speaks, she sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. And her singing is worse. Enter Kathy Selden, Lamont’s “voice” and now her rival.
The movie was only a modest hit when it was released in 1952 with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds as Don and Kathy. Over the years, it has become a classic from the halcyon days of MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, and now, it’s a play on stage at Fort Smith Little Theater — with a little filmmaking thrown in for good measure.
“Within the show there are three times the audience gets to be inside the movie theater and watch a film,” says Brandon Bolin, who returns to the FSLT stage as Lockwood. “One is at the very beginning, one of the silent pictures, which was a lot of fun to film. Then the picture that plays in the middle of the film is the first attempt at talking pictures, and everything that could go wrong does go wrong; it’s one major fiasco. Then at the very end, you see a couple of seconds of the last musical number of the finished film.
“We did take an afternoon and do some filming, and it was a lot of fun.”
Audiences might think turning thespians into filmmakers would be most difficult, but director Nathan Stockemer says that’s not true.
“At first, I’m inclined to say that the atypical technical elements — the filming and the much-anticipated rain scene — were the biggest challenges,” he admits. “However, after watching hours upon hours of the hard work that each one of our cast members has put into the choreography, it’s become clear that the dancing is truthfully the most taxing aspect of this show.
“The Fort Smith Little Theatre has never had a shortage of exceptional
singers, but dancers have been in a much shorter supply,” Stockemer says. “So, to make up for the shortage, our actors have spent the past several weeks working exceptionally hard on polishing the choreography provided by our extremely talented choreographers. As a result, we have a group of people who, for the most part, have little dance experience up to this point in their lives looking like a welltrained dance troupe. Seeing such hard work pay off so spectacularly is the biggest reward for me.”
Bolin says the cast has danced before rehearsal, after rehearsal and, of course, during rehearsal. And he does use the word “grueling.” But he explains that the role of Don Lockwood has been “very high on my bucket list of roles to do. I fell in love with Gene Kelly’s character, the entire movie and the music a long time ago.
“There are so many iconic songs that people don’t realize are from ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’” he says. And the show, adds Stockemer, is “at its most basic level, an entertaining story about the entertainment industry.”
“I will be pleased if our audience members are able to leave with smiles on their faces and a greater appreciation for all the hard work that goes into the production of the most basic forms of entertainment — be it film or live theater, dancing or singing, or even writing and reading,” he says. “We live to entertain. If we are able to give people a brief moment to forget the stress of their daily lives and if we (to quote the show) ‘make ‘em laugh,’ I’ll feel like we’ve done what we’ve set out to do.”