When the original Footloose movie hit theatres in 1984 it made Kevin Bacon a star, and when Footloose the Musical hit the LHS stage in Spring 2017 it made Marshall Fisher a force to be reckoned with.
Footloose ran on the LHS stage March 2-4 and 9-11, the first LHS musical for Drama Adviser Mel Syverson. The story centers around a young man, Ren McCormick, who moves to a small town that has outlawed dancing because of a terrible car accident after a dance that led to the deaths of several high school students. McCormick is a high-strung guy who can’t sit still, so his only hope of being happy in the hodunk town is to get his classmates to rally behind him and get the law overturned so the students can hold a dance. During this struggle he befriends a hilarious hillbilly, Willard, and falls in love with a pastor’s daughter, Ariel.
This stage production is a serious triumph for any cast and crew because of the high expectations set by the movie renditions in 1984 and 2011. A few performers fell short of these expectations, but others shined and helped carry the show to its full glory.
Brian Garza, junior, awed audiences with his astounding stage presence as the Rev. Moore. Garza is a fairly new face to the LHS stage but that was not evident through his confident and attention-grabbing performance as the thought-provoking and subtly solemn Reverend.
Derek Renzelman, junior, hit the stage and impressed audiences with his lively character, Willard Hewitt. Hewitt is a farm-town teenager who is always looking for a fight, and Renzelman brought the character alive in a fun and relatable way.
While many cast members did a fantastic job portraying their characters, no one did it as well as senior Marshall Fisher as Ren. A veteran of the LHS stage, Fisher truly is a force to be reckoned with — energetic, talented and just plain fun to watch. When Fisher performed, the crowd sat in quiet amazement with hushed whispers of “who is that?”
The students involved in the LHS production of Footloose dedicated their time and energy to an amazing show that was incredibly fun to watch. However, the vocal performances were subpar in some places and this distracted from the spoken dialogue. For this reason the Spring musical, Footloose, earned 7 out of 10 stars.