Snap on your yellow plastic slicker, don your shiny red rain boots, pop on a cute rain bonnet and inflate your sunny umbrella for West Hartford’s Playhouse on Park’s truly delightful rain sparkled production of “Singin’ in the Rain” until Sunday, August 17.This smash 1952 movie originally starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor was first brought to the stage in 1985 and continues to be a saccharine sweet crowd pleaser. Credits go to Betty Comden and Adolph Green for the screenplay and to Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed for the music.
The time is 1927 and Monumental Pictures has just released another silent movie hit, “The Royal Rascal,” starring that classic romantic couple Don Lockwood, a dashing Daniel Plimpton, and Lina Lamont, a lovely looking Carolyn Burke. But the old-fashioned heyday of silent films is suddenly taking a back seat to the new kid on the block, the talkies. Can Monumental and its two favorites make the transition? Only if Lina Lamont never opens her uncultured and raspy mouth. But who is going to tell her she sounds like a mad cat in heat, on her good days?
Enter the savior of the day in the personage of peppy and pretty, perky and polished Kathy Selden, a darling Lindsay Gloriana Bohon who has a voice song birds would envy. Don Lockwood’s good friend Cosmo, an ever clowning Robert Mintz has a solution lovely Lina never suspects: using Kathy’s voice to dub in all the words and melodies.
The choreography is non stop super, both wet and dry, thanks to the talents of Robert Mintz and the clever footwork of Mintz and Plimpton, The romantic songs like “All I Do Is Dream of You,” and “You Are My Lucky Star” are balanced by cheery ones like “Good Morning” and the silly ones like “Moses Supposes” and “Make ‘Em Laugh,” with the help of music director Melanie Guerin. Evan Hoffmann directs this puddle jumping joy without getting his own feet wet.
For tickets ($45-55), call Playhouse on Park, 244 Park Road, West Hartford at 860-523-5900, ext. 10 or online at www.playhouseonpark.org. Performances are Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Discounted morning performances are $25.00 on Thursday July 31st at 10:30 a.m. and Friday, August 8th at 10:30 a.m.
It’s umbrellas and thumbs way up for “Singin’ in the Rain.” Lucky stars shine in the sky in West Hartford and we’re not “Supposing” anything!
