Feet too loose

FOOTLOOSE, Palace Theatre, Manchester, to March 19

THIS is a new production of the musical of the Eighties movie from Sell A Door (really), the people who did a good job of Avenue Q a couple of years ago.

This one, sadly, doesn’t fare quite so well. Footloose is one of those nondescript musicals apparently written for no higher purpose than to take money from people who couldn’t let the movie go.

But it has some different songs, with more pointed (and duller) lyrics to replace the pop tunes from the movie - so much so that less than a handful of pop classics remain - Holding out for a Hero, Let’s Hear it for the Boy (liveliest number of the night) and the title song.

And Monday’s opening suffered from the appearance of a stand-in for the central character, Ren, in the shape of Thomas Cotran - passable but not exactly a great singer and dancer.

The production uses and misuses its only starry names: Maureen Nolan - the prettiest of the Nolan Sisters back in the Eighties - now playing the middle-aged, bit-part wife of the big bad preacher of the piece, the Rev Shaw Moore (Nigel Lister) who shut down his sense of fun and banned dancing (as if that was even practically possible) when his son and three others died in some unspecified tragedy.

At least Miss Nolan gets to deliver the best-presented song of the night, Can You Find it in Your Heart?

And Gareth Gates, clearly miscast, obviously has a following since as Ren’s dullard friend Willard he gets the crowd going when he loses his shirt to show the buff body beneath.

Such gimmicks can’t overcome the most glaring aspects of the production though: it’s acceptable to many but a little off in most departments, which makes it unsatisfying as a whole.

The show’s choreography is busy to no great avail and there isn’t much of it; the curious sets close down the playing space so there’s less room for dancing than there might be; none of the performers is much more than competent, and the show is one of the current trend of all-in productions in which the acting company doubles as musicians - which is why cast members often wander on stage incongruously (for a pop musical) holding flutes or trumpets.