"Better Danced than the movie, quite a feat! This production deserves to be noticed!"
-Arlene Croce, The New Yorker

"'Singin' in the Rain' is exhilarating! It sends us out singin'!"
Allan Wallach, Newsday

"Perfectly irrestible--in a league of its own. An enthusiastic, glitzy revival."
-The New York Times

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Main Text

An American tradition and the ultimate movie musical, Singin’ In the Rain is without a doubt the one movie recognized throughout the world as an example of Hollywood at its best. Generally regarded as the finest film musical ever made, Singin’ In the Rain - which starred Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood, Debbie Reynolds as Cathy Selden, Donald O’ Conner as Cosmo Brown, and Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont, consistently appears on lists of the all -time greatest movies ever made. The title song, danced and choreographed in the movie by Gene Kelly, is one of the most famous musical numbers ever filmed. Though 52 years have passed since the movie was shot, the book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green is still hilarious and the songs by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown retain a simple charm. The piece is simply timeless - and seemingly unsurpassable.

From an extraordinary movie an extraordinary musical was born. Twyla Tharp, who made her Broadway debut as both a director and choreographer, worked her magic and brought Singin’ in the Rain to the stage in grand style. She simply wasn’t the least bit fazed by the film’s enormous reputation and instinctively knew that she had the material with which to mold an unforgettable stage musical. She felt that, “the piece is simply a wonderful property with terrific music and dancing and great opportunities for live performers. It is very moving to see in real time and real space a reenactment of the movie by real people and that by staging it I am giving it a validity and continuing its legacy.” The stage version has what the movie couldn’t have: spontaneity, life right there in front of the audience. It has now become a part of our living theater tradition and a moment in the history of making movies.

Ms. Tharp retained almost all of the original choreography from the movie as there was simply no way to improve on it. The famous “rain dance” number which has been indelibly imprinted in our collective conscience by Gene Kelly was kept in its entirety and is wonderfully recreated onstage with the help of an ingeniously designed “rain machine”.

Like the movie, the stage version of Singin’ in the Rain is about making movies; specifically, that tumultuous period when Hollywood was making the somewhat painful changeover from silent films to “talkies”. Careers came to an abrupt end when it was discovered that those gorgeous faces had impossible sounding voices. Lina Lamont, the prototypical dumb blonde, is a compendium of every casualty of the period. Although the characters and incidents are all invented, much of what takes place on stage echoes actual events in those early days of Hollywood.

The plot not only lovingly mocks the Hollywood that was, but also the corny conventions of the staple boy-meets-girl film musicals the studios used to crank out in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Many of the, now hilarious, techniques of the early “talkies” have been retained, such as the actors walking to a vase to speak a line because that ‘s where the mic was hidden. Problems caused by the sound equipment used in those early movies are also highlighted in this new stage version of the film. Footsteps, paper crackling, and beads rattling sounded like thunderstorms through those early microphones and the stilted dialogue of the silent films created disasters when the same dialogue was first used in the “talkies”. Dialogue would occasionally be out of sync with what the characters were actually saying as sound was actually cut on a wax record which often became scratched and would sometimes speed up or slow down.

This new touring production will feature the original national tour set plus all of the wonderful props and costumes of the period. For an unforgettable evening of nostalgia and first rate family entertainment, this is a show that has it all: a spectacular set, sensational choreography, sumptuous costumes, silly fun and scintillating music that will send the audience out singing and dancing. Book it now!

Sample Acts
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