CONTRARY to the picture caption in the Grand Opera House brochure, Bradford pop star Gareth Gates is not playing Ren McCormack in Racky Plews’s faithful revival of the 1980s’ musical Footloose.
Relax, Gates is in the show, but not starring as Ren, the newcomer who has blown into Bible Belt Bomont from Chicago, out of step with a town that buckles that Bible belt on the tightest notch, with the town council even banning dancing after four Bomont High pupils perished five years earlier in a car accident.
Instead, Gates is on his second stretch of shows in the comedy role of Willard, the hapless town hick with the permanent matchstick protruding from between his lips. He so enjoyed his debut funny turn in last year’s tour that he snapped up the chance to return.
And he does not so much scene-steal as steal the entire show, whether failing to read the advances of Laura Sillett’s spunky Rusty, stripping off to his toned torso in Holding Out For A Hero or bringing physical humour to the show’s comedy number Mama Says (You Can’t Back Down). The star quality first spotted on the Pop Idol talent show in 2001 is finding full expression here.
Dean Pitchford, Walter Bobbie and Tom Snow’s stage spin-off of the 1984 teen movie demands an exuberant, high-energy performance from start to finish, and Racky Plews’s cast of actor-musicians certainly oblige, to the point of exhaustion at the finale’s resumé of the biggest hits, Footloose, Holding Out For A Hero and Let’s Hear It For The Boy.
Let's hear it for the boy: Gareth Gates strips down in Footloose, The Musical. Picture: Matt Martin
The show is light, insubstantial, even a little daft, being a dance-filled musical about not being allowed to dance, but don’t be pedantic. It may feel dated too, but deliberately so, and there is just enough of a sting in the account of stultifying life in the WASP smalltown of Bomont, where the music died five years ago in this quiet Deep American South backwater, or rather the anguished Reverend Shaw Moore (Reuven Gershon) administered the dance ban after losing his son.
Into Bomont from the big city breezes rebellious but clean-living teen Ren (Joshua Dowen) with his mother (Lindsay Goodhand) after his dad leaves them without explanation. Ren innocently breaks every Bomont taboo, complicating matters further by falling for Ariel (Hannah Price), the Reverend’s equally rebellious daughter.
Sillett, Price and Dowen all cut loose impressively, and the cast at large, with multiple requirements to sing, dance and play instruments, pull off love songs and show stoppers with equal aplomb.
Maureen Nolan's Vi Moore and Gershon's Reverend are burdened with a couple of dull songs, but overall let’s hear it for the boys and the girls, and especially for Yorkshire’s own Gareth Gates, who most definitely has found a new comedic string to his bow.
Footloose, The Musical runs at Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7,30pm nightly and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
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