STAGE REVIEW : A CHANGE OF VENUE FOR ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’

Gotta sing! Gotta dance! Gotta rain! But the assignment wasn’t to take another swipe at “Singin’ in the Rain.” It was to see how the show would play at the new Orange County Performing Arts Center, which hasn’t housed a musical yet.

It played quite cheerfully on Tuesday night, more so than it had earlier this month at the L.A. Pantages. And the Orange County audience was delighted to be seeing a Broadway-style musical without having to drive all the way up to the Pantages, or the Shubert, or the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

However, let’s face it. The center’s Segerstrom Hall is a 3,000-seat concert hall, not a Broadway theater. As at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, musicals can play here--but part of the house will be out of range.

It wasn’t a question of sound levels Tuesday night. “Singin’ in the Rain” was as clear from the back of the third tier as it was downstairs. Somebody had done a good job tuning the house. (I’m told that the show used its own sound system, not the theater’s.)

But, by necessity, it was canned sound. So there was no ripeness to it: no thrill when it touched the ear, as when a soprano floats a pianissimo to the top gallery. The sound was up-close. The actors were far away.

So the liveness of the show in this house (and if theater isn’t live, who needs it?) will depend on how close one sits to the stage. At Segerstrom, one wouldn’t want to sit any farther away than the first rows in the second deck.

Downstairs offers good sight-lines, with far fewer side seats than at the Pantages. The house’s ribbed roof line and heavily demarcated proscenium are also welcome. We’ve had enough blank-walled theaters--this one returns to the idea that stage audiences want to feel that they are sitting in a place, not floating in a void. (Upstairs, the architecture gets a little oppressive.)

The sound downstairs seemed hyped Tuesday, with this interesting result: Rather than leaning toward the performers, the listener sat back and let them do all the work, as on TV. The applause and the laughter had a slightly abstract feeling. Again, this isn’t what theater is supposed to be about--even a designedly foolish piece like “Singin’ in the Rain.”

(One hopes that Orange County audiences won’t be too cowed by warnings not to applaud in the middle of things. At musicals, when the performers twirl their umbrellas, it’s perfectly OK to clap--in fact they’ll be disappointed if you don’t.)

Additional notes: The light level before the show is excellent: bright enough so that the customer can read his or her program, but not harsh. There’s a gala feeling to it. The lighting also makes the burgundy color scheme seem glamorous. Much the same color is used at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, but there it seems flat.

The theater’s exterior and its mirrored lobbies aren’t particularly to my taste, but they do provide a sense of occasion, which theater-going is supposed to be. The parking structure is just as complicated as it is at the Music Center or the Shubert, but there’s fresh air to breathe as you search for your car, since the structure is out in the open.

As for “Singin’ in the Rain” (playing through Sunday), it remains a synthetic stage derivative of a musical that was conceived for the screen and belongs there. (Twyla Tharp’s Broadway version may have been less effective than this touring one, but at least Tharp tried to do something new with the property.)

However, Donn Simone, Brad Moranz and Cynthia Ferrer go about their lead performances with a will, and it will be nice to see them in a real show sometime.

P.S. In my original review, I misidentified Moranz’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” number as “Be a Clown.” Everybody knows that “Be a Clown” was written for another great MGM musical, “The Pirate.”