Clare Halse, Dan Burton and Daniel Crossley in Singin’ in the Rain at the Theatre du Chatelet, Paris. Picture: Patrick Berger
Singin’ in the Rain continues at Theatre du Chatelet, Paris, until 26 March and returns there from 27 November 2015 to 15 January 2016.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s raining Gene Kelly at the Chatelet with the pre-Christmas stage premiere of his 1951 masterpiece An American in Paris (now transferred to Broadway) quickly followed by his big smash from the following year, Singin’ in the Rain, dancing up a storm in the French capital.
Don’t bother trying to get a ticket for the rest of his short run – they sold out almost as soon as they were printed. But this stylish, fabulously dressed re-imagining of the MGM classic will return as the 2,000-seater Chatelet’s Christmas show, for seven weeks from the end of November.
Judging from the packed houses, the roars of laughter, the whoops of delight and the standing ovations, Parisians have fallen in love with the American musical.
They have long adored West Side Story, of course, because of the Oscar-winning film, and their familiarity with Kelly’s iconic dancing-in-rain, splashing-in-puddles sequence means there’s no language barrier here in a stage version that comes in English with French surtitles.
Not that Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s screenplay (with songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed), first turned into a stage musical for Tommy Steele at the Palladium in the 1983, takes a great deal of understanding. It is not Sondheim, after all.
There have been several West End revivals since, the latest coming with the Chichester Festival Theatre version which transferred to the West End and then toured until October 2014, but this is the Chatelet’s first crack at it.
And while it is gorgeous to look at (all dressed in monochrome decor and costumes to match the black-and-white of the 1920s movie period) and the music is full-bodied under MD Gareth Valentine’s 42-piece Paris Chamber Orchestra, it does lack a bit of the film’s charisma.
Canadian director Robert Carsen and his talented My Fair Lady team of set designer Tim Hatley and costume wizard Anthony Powell return to the banks of the Seine, this time with the brilliant Stephen Mear, fresh from his Donmar triumph with City of Angels, in charge of choreography.
A predominantly British cast, headed by Dan Burton (Jersey Boys, The Pajama Game) as screen legend Don Lockwood, have great fun with an incredibly silly story, but one which does highlight what the end of the silent-movie era meant to actors with voices totally unsuited to ‘talkies’. Unless they mastered the ‘new cinema’ quickly they were toast.
One clearly heading for the exit is Don’s leading lady Lina Lamont, played with a wonderful disregard for the English language by Emma Kate Nelson in a role based on silent star Norma Talmadge, whose career nosedived once she had to open her mouth for anything other than a kiss.
Lina’s high-pitched Brooklyn screech means her no-singing, no-dancing, no-acting technique has to be covered up. Into the breach to dub her far-from-dulcet tones (but behind Lina’s back) comes the posher, classically-trained Kathy Selden (sweetly played by Clare Halse) and there are no prizes for guessing how it all turns out.
The difficulty with Nelson’s showier part is that, in achieving the humour, many of her words are lost to the audience. She needs to be a pain to listen to, but somehow we have to know what she’s saying.
She is so dumb she believes Lockwood will whisk her off into the sunset of real life just as they do on celluloid, but he can barely stand her and it is Selden who predictably wins his heart.
Burton has an easy-listening singing voice and his tap-dancing with his best pal Cosmo (Daniel Crossley, excellent) lights up the stage. But he’s on a hiding to nothing in his biggest, faithfully re-created number because everyone remembers the unique magic of Kelly.
This is a show that involves custard-pie slapstick plus a fair bit of comedy business and the cast’s slick timing, not least in the engaging ‘Moses Supposes’ (a brilliantly danced number in which the buxom diction coach Jennie Dale deservedly wins audience hearts in keeping up with, and even outshining, the two men), is a joy.
It is not the cast’s fault, or the director’s, that Singin’ in the Rain is not the best-balanced show ever written. How could it be with a 95-minute first act and a 45-minute second?
Anything coming after Don’s famous showstopper that brings the first half to such a damp but theatrically thrilling climax is always likely to be a letdown.
The title song is winningly reprised in a colourful finale with the entire ensemble in yellow wielding umbrellas as cameramen circle round them but somehow it isn’t quite enough.
While the two leading ladies have their best singing moments in Act II – Halse with ‘Would You?’, Nelson with a heartfelt ‘What’s Wrong With Me?’ – it is an effort for the director to maintain the pre-interval impetus.
Special mention must be made of the fiendishly clever film-clip inserts, reminiscent at times of The Artist, in which the over-the-top pantomime of silent performers mouthing laughable captions has the audience in stitches.
This ever-hummable, tap-dancing treat also heaps credit on Epsom’s Laine Theatre Arts as Burton, Nelson (a West End veteran at just 12 with Aspects of Love) and the loveable Dale all began their careers there.
A very enjoyable evening – how else could it be with those great songs? – without perhaps being the glorious Chatelet at its very best.
Jeremy Chapman
Readers may also be interested in:
An American in Paris – Theatre du Chatelet, Paris – Review
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