Review: Can't Stand Still: FOOTLOOSE Explodes Onto MSMT Stage

Bursting with energy and pulsating with a heartwarming story of forgiveness and family, Maine State Music Theatre’s new production of FOOTLOOSE serves up both a genuinely poignant tale and a dance extravaganza.  The new production, directed by E. Faye Butler and choreographed by Tyler Hanes, the first revival since 2014 of the 2008 musical by Tom Snow, Dean Pitchford, and Walter Bobbei, offers a new deeper, more probing and more compelling take on this timeless story of teen rebellion, generational conflict, and a journey to forgiveness.

Director Butler strives to keep the story simple and honest, tapping into the small town, dynamic and exploring the tensions, conflicts, and bonds. Her work is character and scene driven, delving into connections, relationships, and emotional motivation. The pacing is calibrated to build until the tension explodes into the powerful release of the dance finale. Her casting choices are also original. Featuring a cast from diverse racial backgrounds, her vision opens new possibilities in the dynamics of the story.

She is expertly partnered by Choreographer Tyler Hanes, who uses a number of dance styles from social dance of the 90s like American Bandstand and country line dancing to storytelling in a Broadway and jazz mode. There is a stunning electricity, authenticity, and sheer brash vigor to the movement that projects the inner fire of the Bomont youth. Throughout the musical, dance is the metaphor for self-expression, finding identity and liberation from anger, from loss, from otherness.

Music Director Jason Wetzel (Jacob Stebly, Associate Music Director) leads the seven - person band from the keyboards, with style and irrepressible energy in a score which fuses gospel, rock, disco, and country, along with Broadway ballads and anthems.

Once again, the visual production, with the benefit of the video technology, vividly transports the viewer to the hot, dusty, Bible-belt world of Bomont, Oklahoma.  Chuck Kading’s decor seamlessly creates the rapidly changing locales with well-chosen flies and props, while Jerran Kowalski’s video projections echo the rhythm and insistent motion of the production. There are steel girders, skyscrapers, and pop art in the opening Chicago scenes, which give way to sun-drenched and moonlit wheat fields, watercolored postcards which superimpose in rapid succession to create motion, flickering stars, and the flash of moving trains. These are bathed in contrasting palette of warm and cool hues in Jeff Koger’s lighting design, while Shannon Slaton provides a vibrant sound environment. Costume Designer Jane Alois Stein (Wigs, Kevin Foster III) creates an almost timeless aesthetic – reminiscent of the 80s and 90s of the original work but also remarkably contemporary – suggesting that places like Bomont have an immutable universality. Stage Manager Amy Berticini and her team keep the fast-paced action running smoothly.

The cast features talented young artists and veteran stars. In the role of Ren, J. Antonio Rodriguez brings a raw, wired energy and streetwise savvy, combined with lithe, limber, liquid dancing and sheer vocal brio. Maya Jerome Thomas’ Ariel  conveys the depth of her repressed grief and rebellion. A closet poet who dreams of escape, she’s a caged, bird waiting to break free. She shines in songs like  “Holding Out for a Hero” and proves deeply touching in the reconciliation scene with her father.

Gregg Goodbrod projects dignity, authority, and a fiery penchant for preaching. He pours his anguish, vulnerability, and extraordinary vocal gifts into his solos of “Heaven Help Me,” just as he demonstrates his intensity as an actor throughout.

Kristina Leopold as Vi Moore, the Reverend’s long suffering wife, maintains a facade of passivity, while at the same time that she projects a strong, quiet, inner light that eventually affects the reconciliation between daughter and father, pastor and community, and she has the opportunity to display her lovely voice in moments like “Can You Find It in Your Heart.”

Oliver Prose as Willard brings a goofy, endearing quality to the role, as well as a true comic talent.  Maladroit physically and verbally, he, nonetheless, charms in scenes like the one in which he learns to dance. As Chuck Cranston, Eli Mayer‘s abusive, misogynist bully becomes a kind of poster child for everything dark and dangerous that Bomont represents. Nazarria Workman’s Rusty demonstrates some powerful country vocals, especially in her showstopping, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” and plays the plain talking kind-hearted friend to Ariel.

David Girolmo makes Ren’s Uncle Wes a conflicted man, torn between loyalty to family and to the conservative values of Bomont, and his cameo as a hirsute guitar player at the country dance adds a quirky, amusing scene. Charis Leos plays Ethel McCormick as a woman still in shock over her change of circumstances, treading cautiously in a new and unfamiliar world, but supportive of  her bold and original son, and she makes the most of her scene where she encourages Ren to speak his heart to the pastor. And her brief cameo as the tough talking, cigarette smoking burger shop owner, Betty Blast, is a comic gem.

The ensemble does an outstanding job, especially in the big dance numbers, and each adds a colorful persona to to round out the portrait of this small town. Some fine performances include Lauren Adams as Urleen and Kelly Lomonte as Wendy Jo, who give vocal authority to numbers like ”Holding Out for a Hero;” Matthew Irani,, Brian Fortunato, Todd Turner, and Nolan Um, who partner Willard with comic glee in “Mamma Says;” Darren Lorenzo as the bewildered high school coach;  Corey Barrow as the high school principal and belting out vocals as Cowboy Bob; and Greta Cardoza as Eleanor Dunbar presiding over the town council with officiousness.

The mega dance sequence that constitutes the finale is, of course, a virtuosic way of ending a narrative in which dance has been the compelling force, but the celebration of dance, which concludes the evening represents so much more in the story of FOOTLOOSE. It symbolizes Ren’s self-expression and forging of identity for himself & the town folk. It is a cathartic release from years of repressive convention, and for the Moore family, a deliverance from grief into the embrace of forgiveness.

As Ren insists that he cannot stand still, his wild dance of liberation is also an affirmation of moving forward and finding his own unique path. Maine State Music Theatre has taken this iconic musical of the 1990s and presented it as a timeless narrative about heartbreak, striving, healing, and celebrating.

Photographs courtesy of MSMT, photographer Jared Morneau

FOOTLOOSE runs from July 17 to the 26, 2025, at MSMT‘s Pickard Theater on the Bowdoin College campus, One Bath Rd., Brunswick, Maine   www.msmt.org 207-725-8769