Theatre is back with a bang

The West Midlands remains the UK's foremost purveyor of theatre outside London, with numerous provincial venues across Staffordshire, Shropshire, the Black Country and in Birmingham. Plans are already in place for spectacular family pantomimes later this year - but before then there'll be other big, West End-calibre productions.

The first of those is Singin’ In The Rain, which comes to the Birmingham Hippodrome from June 6.

In the UK and Ireland tour of the production, directed by Jonathan Church, Adam Cooper plays Don Lockwood - a huge star in 1920s Hollywood who is suddenly tasked with helping turn silent movie The Duelling Cavalier into a talkie. Trouble is, his co-star Lina Lamont has a terrible speaking voice and she and Don have been playing the happy couple to appease the publicity department, which complicates his burgeoning romance with chorus girl Kathy Selden.

Directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and legendary director Stanley Donen, whose other screen musical credits include On the Town and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the film version was surprisingly not the huge hit its iconic status suggests, raking in a respectable but not blockbusting $7.2 million against a $2.54 million budget.

Most critics loved it but it was only up for a couple of Oscars, for Best Supporting Actress and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. The only major award it bagged was a Golden Globe for Donald O’Connor. Time has been kind to the movie, though, with many film historians citing it as the greatest screen musical ever and it is currently ranked fifth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best films.

Sticking faithfully to the original story but including a few additional songs, the stage musical premiered at the London Palladium in 1983, was directed by and starred Tommy Steele and ran for nearly two years. It opened on Broadway in 1985 and returned to the West End in 1989 with Broadway star Don Correia.

In the 90s Paul Nicholas took it on tour around the UK and there were revivals in 2000 at the National Theatre and 2004 at Sadler’s Wells, the latter of which featured Adam Cooper in the lead as well as on duty as choreographer. Adam went on to play Don again at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2011 and in the West End in 2012, returning to the show at Sadler’s Wells last year ahead of this year’s UK and Ireland tour.

Cooper is making guest appearances on a few of the tour dates, as is Faye Tozer of Steps fame as Lina Lamont and Kevin Clifton as Don’s comedy sidekick Cosmo Brown. But the bulk of the tour is being done by Sam alongside Charlotte Gooch as Kathy, Ross McLaren as Cosmo and Jenny Gayner as Lina.

Charlotte Gooch is back as Kathy, having played the aspiring starlet in London and Japan, and she agrees Singin’ in the Rain is the perfect tonic for troubled times. “It’s nice to have some old-school musical escapism,” says the actress who hails from Godalming in Surrey. “It gives everyone a nice, joyous feeling for a couple of hours and an escape from the darkness that is the outside world right now. It’s romance, it’s comedy and there’s a happy ending.”

Having previously appeared in Flashdance, Top Hat and Dirty Dancing, Charlotte adds: “It’s all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting, and Kathy is such a joyful character. Everything about her is cheeky, loveable and wholesome and I love bringing all that to life.”

Asked to name a favourite number in the show, she cites Good Morning. “We have so much fun,” she says of goofing around with Sam and Ross. “We’re meant to be playing and bantering with each other, and we genuinely are. I also love the encore in which we all get to splash around in the water. I still have moments where I’m thinking ‘It’s raining! Inside a theatre!’ Who normally gets to do that for a living?”

Lincolnshire’s Ross McLaren was in the ensemble in a Paris production of the show and played Cosmo in Japan. Humbly classing himself as a Jack of all trades and a master of none, he says: “You have to be able to sing, dance and act and really rise to the occasion. He’s a comic character with so many brilliant lines, he does full-out dances and full-out harmonies. I have to bring my A game.”

Ross’s previous musical theatre credits include Sleepless, Big The Musical and White Christmas but, having been in Doctors on TV for the past year and a half, he adds: “It was a bit of a shock to the system to get back into dance. I’ve danced since I was four but I was out of practice.”

As for taking on a role that Donald O’Connor played to comedy perfection in the film, he admits: “Gene Kelly said O’Connor was the best comic actor he’d ever worked with and that’s a touch act to follow. I’m rewatching the film and learning from him, and it was great to see Kevin Clifton’s take on the role too. You have to put a lot of yourself into so I’m bringing my own take to it as well.”

As Lina Lamont, Jenny Garner shared the part with Faye at Sadler’s Wells and full-time in Japan. A stage veteran who has also been in everything from Annie and Spamalot to Chicago and Legally Blonde, she was drawn to the squeaky-voiced character because: “I’m a sucker for comedy. I absolutely love making people laugh so it’s a gift of a role, although she’s not as stupid as she appears at the beginning and you want her naivety to come across because you don’t want the audience to hate her.”

Deliberately singing out of tune isn’t as hard as it seems or indeed sounds. “People have said to me you need to be able to sing well to sing out of tune and I’m grabbing on to that,” laughs the actress from Leigh-on-Sea. “It’s a lot of fun but you don’t want to go too far with it, otherwise it can makes it unbelievable, and playing the truth with Lina is important”.

Japanese etiquette meant that audiences over there were instructed not to laugh, talk or cheer during a performance. “But they’d applaud at the end of a number and not stop,” Jenny says. “That’s how they expressed their enjoyment. Now I’m looking forward to being on tour over here and a more vocal reaction, to making everyone laugh and giving them a really good time. Laughter really is the best medicine, isn’t it?”

With theatres getting back in the swing, it's time to look forward to a bona fide classic in the weeks ahead.

Singin’ In The Rain is at Birmingham Hippodrome from Monday, June 6 to Saturday, June 11. Book your tickets at www.birminghamhippodrome.com or call 0844 338 5000 (calls from 4.5p per min plus access charge).