Mountain View High School will be putting on ‘Footloose’ this Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The full cast of Footloose at a recent dress rehearsal includes in the front row, from left, Alexa Suchnick, Olivia Srauss, Julia Madas, Liam Maloney, Ben McCarty and Caroline Miller. In the middle row are Stephanie Ostir, Katie Tyson, Cheverly Chichura, Brtanny Staudinger, Doug Martin, Zach McCarty, Paul Fontana, and Haley Maloney. In the back row are Melody Cummings, Kyle Heide, Brian Goble, Peter Maloney, Ben Maitland, Lucas Jodon, Emily Supancik, Dedra Congdon and Veronica Robbins.
BY PAT FARNELLI
Cast members of Mountain View High School’s Footloose are revved up and ready to cut loose Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights with their production of “Footloose,” the 1984 musical that was a major motion picture hit.
At a rehearsal Friday, the actors bantered over lines with director Margie McCarty, and bounded onto the stage for their singing and dancing numbers.
The story line: a city boy comes to a small town where rock music and dancing have been banned. A tragedy has struck close to home, and a pastor’s daughter grapples with her feelings for the newcomer as well as her connection to her pastor father, the toughest nut to crack when the high school students want to hold a dance.
The Mountain View production, while full of energy, is a little less racy than the 1984 film. That’s natural, seeing that the director is a United Methodist Church pastor and at least four of the cast members are preachers’ kids in real life.
The costuming is not an attempt to duplicate ’80s styles, but just typical small-town, dress-down attire of the present.
The choice of show is especially timely, as a motion picture remake scheduled for 2011 has not yet been released. It is a good fit for the cast and the community, with its issues of youth high spirits and adult caution and concern.
Ren McCormick, played by Liam Maloney, is the male lead in Footloose. His character is the one dying to dance in a very straightlaced community.
Principal roles are played by: Julia Madas as Ariel Moore; Liam Maloney as Ren McCormick, the footloose new kid; Paul Fontana as the Rev. Moore.
Ben McCarty has winning moves as Willard Hewitt, and Caroline Miller, Alexa Suchnick, and Olivia Strauss are funny and snarky as Rusty, Urleen and Wendy Jo, who form the background trio for songs like “Hero.”
Full cast dance numbers are well staged, and there was a definite stage presence behind the vocal talent at dress rehearsal, in spite of a few soloists, afflicted with headcolds, lip-synching to spare their voices for the actual show nights.
Showtime is 7 p.m.
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