‘RAIN’ DUE TO FALL ON PANTAGES

When the musical “Singin’ in the Rain” opened on Broadway in July, 1985, critics turned its optimistic title inside out: “Whistling in the Dark,” “Singin’ Down the Drain.”

Such reviews typically become obituaries. But this $4.7-million musical, based on MGM’s 1952 film classic about love and survival when talkies transformed the movie studios, did not die. The touring version, beginning performances at the Pantages Theater on Tuesday, brings the show back to its Hollywood roots with a survival story of its own.

That story includes a celebrated choreographer’s stumble in New York, her producers’ persistence and an overhaul on the road. It also involves the realities that can put a non-hit on tour in 1986, when the demand outstrips Broadway’s supply of strong shows.

In fact, the show’s investors hope to start seeing a profit by June, after limited runs in Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, San Diego and beyond.

Some reviewers have said that on-tour revisions coaxed a butterfly from the Broadway caterpillar. Others have said that the road version was more of a moth and still wonder at a show derived from what one skeptic called “such a movie movie.”

A dazzler is what three Chicago producers--72-year-old lawyer Maurice Rosenfield, his wife Lois and Cindy Pritzker--figured on in 1984, when Betty Comden and Adolph Green agreed to adapt their screenplay for the stage.

“ ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ was one of Hollywood’s top movies,” said Shirley Herz, spokeswoman for the trio. “They wanted to add a creative element for the theater.”

Choosing Twyla Tharp, a leading modern dance choreographer, to direct the show was to be that element. It was Tharp’s Broadway debut as a director-choreographer.

According to a number of reports, she may have been overwhelmed. The show’s opening was postponed twice for structural revisions. At least one other director was summoned to help.

The New York Times’ Frank Rich described the result as “a mild diversion that remains resolutely earthbound.”

But just when it looked as if the reviews would silence “Singin’ in the Rain,” Rosenfield-Pritzker threw in another $1 million, for a television ad. Recalled Herz: “We were on the way to the theater with a closing notice in hand and Lois said, ‘We just can’t do it.’ ”

Meanwhile, theater operators from Buffalo, Baltimore and other cities saw the New York show as a way to fill a few weeks in their subscription schedules.

Eighteen theaters across the country work with PACE Theatricals, a large-scale producer/presenter of musicals, that puts together its own productions for the road and also likes the prestige of at least one Broadway show per season. PACE President Miles Wilkin saw the New York “Singin’ in the Rain,” which he did not like, and a Tharpless London version (starring Tommy Steele), which he did.

“What I saw in New York was disappointing,” Wilkin said recently. “But I had a feeling for what it could be. What Maurice Rosenfield did--keeping it open--was very courageous. He developed an audience for it in New York that gave it legitimacy for a tour.”

Before the New York production closed in May, PACE joined with two other producers to tour the show. The new team shaped its own version, hiring the London production’s choreographer, Peter Gennaro, and veteran director Lawrence Kasha, whose movie-derived stage efforts included “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

The show was redesigned over three summer weeks in Dallas. Kasha shared a key problem with Tharp: He had to translate a movie for the stage without the visual control that gives cinema its power.

Tharp had tried to duplicate certain types of cinematic effects, including blackouts between numbers. Instead of vivid screen images, the New York production had elaborate sets, including a trolley on which movie star Don Lockwood leaps before landing in ingenue Kathy Selden’s car.

Kasha used softer transitions, reshuffled scenes and traded the trolley for a romantic first meeting on a park bench.

“What I tried to work very hard on was the love story,” Kasha said. “I thought the love story was lost (in the Tharp version). By dimming the lights, by putting on spotlights, by using stagecraft, I can make you look where I want you to look.”

Like the Broadway production, the one on tour comes with a waterproof set that circulates 700 gallons of rain for the Lockwood character to sing in. (He’s played on the road by Donn Simione.)

While local subscription lists provide the show with part of its audience, single-ticket sales also count and the show’s producers market it aggressively.

In rainy Seattle, the show’s producers staged a fashion show of rain gear at a department store; in Chicago, Chicago Bear Willie Gault performed a walk-on role in a scene that was filmed and rebroadcast during a televised football game.

Perhaps no one feels the pressure of keeping “Singin’ in the Rain” alive as much as the performers, most of whom did not appear in New York.

“This is a ‘like-me’ kind of show, and it’s really hard if you don’t feel liked,” said Cynthia Ferrer, the petite redhead who plays Kathy Selden. “You have to go up there and do your best and keep reminding yourself that the most important moment in this business is the next.”