After seeing the Friday night showing of footloose, I left the theatre with a huge smile on my face that I couldn’t shake until I got home. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much dedication and heart was put into everything from the costumes, to the songs. The props were aesthetically pleasing and set the tone and mood for the entire production. The costumes were especially great and captured the 80’s setting. Everybody who took part in the play did a fantastic job acting; there wasn’t a single person who did poorly.
The story is simple yet has many fun, small details. It follows a high school student named Ren who moves away from the city to a small country town. Everyone in the town is really uptight and cautious, due to the Reverend banning anything that could lead to sinful acts, which includes dancing. To Ren, dancing is everything, and of course, he rebels against the preacher and town and tries to lift the ban.
The main character, Ren McCormack (played by Dallin Tippetts) was tough to connect with slightly in the beginning, but grew on me as the play went on. Every character was super memorable and easy to distinguish from each other. My favorite characters included: Ren, Willard (Jordan Harmon), Reverend Shaw Moore (Matthew Noall), and Ariel Moore (Tiarra Edwards). Each actor did a fantastic job in their roles and brought their own unique performance and energy to the production.
Willard was the lovable, comedic relief who had the audience yelling with laughter every time he was on stage. Reverend Shaw was one of the best villains I have seen in a while. Even though he spoke with menance, the audience still knew he wanted the best for his daughter.
Ariel is the daughter of a Reverend, who wants to live her own life and break away from her father’s legacy. I thought she did an excellent job in both her dramatic and more lighthearted scenes.
As far as the story is concerned, it excels at covering everything it needs to in its time limit. Because I have never seen the movie, everything felt fresh and new. In fact, I would recommend going to see this if you have not seen the movie. It was really fun and has encouraged me to watch the movie.
After being asked what it was like to be in the play, Phoenix Glodowski (who played Chuck Cranston) responded, “It’s amazing and awesome. It’s like the best thing ever; I really just love the feeling of community and family that you get from the cast.” In an interview, Kareena Brennan (who played Urleen) says, “It’s like the best thing ever, I love all of the choreography we do.”
According to both cast members, the atmosphere during practice was really positive and energized. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a lot of stress involved, as there always is with productions like this. Overall, this was a fantastic, well thought out production, that was a lot of fun.