‘Stepping Out’: Finding a chorus line in a church hall

By Rich Fahey

JAMAICA PLAIN — Before I even stepped into historic Eliot Hall to watch the Footlight Club’s lovely, heartfelt production of Richard Harris’s “Stepping Out,” I found a kinship with the actors.

“Stepping Out” chronicles a dance teacher’s quest to teach her students to tap dance and to become a cohesive ensemble in time to represent her at a charity gala.

Mavis (Carlee Fallon), a retired professional hoofer, oversees a class of seven disparate, diverse women and one man that meets every Thursday in a church hall..

In its structure, the show is relatable to classics such as “Kiss Me, Kate” and Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off,” which both feature a plethora of backstage/offstage doings.  Here, members of the class bring their personalities and personal problems with them, creating a series of complications aside from the obvious difficulties in mastering a difficult dance genre.

There’s germ-phobic Vera (Maria De Vries), a snobbish sort who wears her wealth literally on her sleeves but suffers from seemingly incurable foot-in-mouth disease.     

Dorothy (Alicia Powell) is small and anxious, and has a habit of repeating other’s words, while Maxine (Lauren Basler) is a smart, savvy businessman who could sell you anything and doesn’t suffer from shyness or a lack of confidence.

Lynne (Marie Siopy) is a young nurse, already having some qualms about her choice of career, while Andy (Cassidy Guimares) is timid and being bullied by her husband.

Geoffrey (Anthony Rinaldi) is nice but shy and quiet, a widower, who has interest in Andy.

Sylvia (Elizabeth Bean) is a live wire, bubbly and flirty, married with three children and struggling financially.

Rose (Chantel O’Brien) is a woman of color who is always struggling with her hair, and yet another outsized personality.

There is some serious comic relief when it comes to the role of Mrs. Fraser (Mary Beth Murphy), the irascible, grumpy, sarcastic, temperamental accompanist who is apparently doing everyone a favor simply by being there.  She has a lot to say about everyone but has a special relationship with Mavis that is a part of the storyline. Murphy and Director David Costa worked together in the  DASH Award-winning “Every Brilliant Thing” at the  Curtain Call Theatre.

Costa has assembled as disparate a group of characters as you’re likely to find, but slowly and surely, and with great angst, they meld together to a finale that will have you recall the iconic final moments of  “A Chorus Line.”

Along the way, there will be endless debate about costumes, hats or no hats, canes or no canes, solos or no solos. And if you don’t have actual canes, almost anything and everything will do.

It will be darkest just before the dawn, when even the always-positive Mavis begins to doubt that the group will come together when it counts.

The difficulties the students had picking up tap routines recalled mine as an amateur actor struggling to learn a long dance number called “Side by Side by Side” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.” I was eventually involuntarily enrollled in Remedial Dancing, a special class for those of us whose female partners had started wearing combat boots.     

So I had a special reason to admire all those who made the time and effort to master tapping after Costa said that some members of the cast had no experience at all with tapping before beginning rehearsals..

He also said that when the cast became proficient, the toughest part was getting them to dance badly as required in the earlier scenes.

Costa, who also has won awards as an actor, said he has wanted to direct this show since he first met Liza Minelli, who starred in the film version, in 1990. In 1992, he spoke with her backstage at Symphony Hall to tell her how much he loved the film and that the audience’s over-the-moon reaction to it at the end was something he would never forget.

When you are the director of a show at the community theater level, you end up wearing many hats, which in this case also included doing the choreography, set and costume design and assisting with props.

As with virtually every community theater, the Footlight Club also depends on an indispensable, dedicated corps of members who were also part of the production team. They included Brian Bakofen, producer, and set dressing; Rachel Veto, stage manager, and Meredith Weaver, set dresser and assistant stage manager; and Zach Best, lead carpenter.

Also: Sherilyn Levy, costume assistant; Peter Kates, lighting design; Bill Shamblian, sound design; Shawn Gelzleichter, piano recordings; and Paul O’Shaughnessy, technical director.

All in all, the production values of “Stepping Out” were of professional grade, a tribute to all involved in the production.

The Footlight Club is America’s oldest continually operating community theater and “Stepping Out” kicked off its 147^th on recently in venerable Eliot Hall, at 7A Eliot St. in Jamaica Plain.

The theater has been lovingly restored and updated through the years and in a walk through it, you can see and feel the its storied past and hear the echoes of the countless number of shows performed there.

At the end of a Sept. 16 performance of “Stepping Out,” Costa and the cast got the Liza Minelli sendoff: The loudest of cheers and a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever,

The Footlight Club is located at 7A Eliot St., Jamaica Plain. For more information on upcoming performances and tickets, go to www,footlight.com.