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Don Correia approached his role with quite confidence

Tharp is redoing the production numbers, most notably the big ballet and the section heralding the advent of sound. She is also changing "Make 'Em Laugh" - the showstopper for the Cosmo Brown character (played by Peter Slutsker) - for practical reasons: It is physically impossible to perform Donald O'Connor's original dance in one take. A few songs have been replaced. But most of what remains will be reassuringly familiar to fans of the movie.

"At the heart of all musical production numbers is the same problem - how to take the book legitimately into singing and dancing," asserts Tharp, whose dance company is participating in the show's ensemble. "The movie approaches and deals with this better than any other I can think of, especially with the 'Singin' in the Rain' number. You can really believe that a man who has experienced what Don Lockwood has just been through would fold up his umbrella and sing and dance in the rain. That being the case, why should I change a single time step to a double time step? I'm trying to maintain as much as possible from the numbers that have that kind of integrity and vitality about them, taking into account the differences in time and space between stage and screen. 

"All that considered, I'm preserving as much as I can of "Fit as a Fiddle' - one of my all-time favorite dances - 'Good Morning,' 'Moses Supposes' and 'Singin' in the Rain,'" she continues. "Once you take Kelly's choreography for those numbers, you've established a vernacular for Don Lockwood. It's like if a person who is speaking with a Southern dialect all of a sudden starts talking as though he were from New England. Two different tap styles don't mix any better than two different dialects. So the Lockwood character will maintain Kelly's choreography. It's wonderful. Why change it?"

Great care is being taken to retain many

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of the non-musical segments as well. Comden and Green are reworking their screenplay to meet the demands imposed by the theatre. "The main thing in making the transfer is to be able to make the transitions between scenes," explains Comden, "because you don't have the quick cuts and the dissolves, the movie techniques. You have to think of the changes in stage terms. The story and the characters are the same. It was just a question of taking something that worked beautifully onscreen and trying to make the best possible musical comedy book out of it."

Everyone connected with the show realizes that comparisons are inevitable. Correia is undoubtedly in the most vulnerable spot; he is, after all, stepping into a role which will always be indelibly linked with Kelly. But he is approaching the part with a quiet confidence - which he says he gained from playing the lead on Broadway in My One and Only - and is determined to make the character his own. "It doesn't make any difference to me how Gene Kelly played it," claims Correia, whose dance style, ironically, has been compared to Kelly's on several occasions. "There are certain things I'm playing similar to the way he did because I think it's what the character calls for. I'm not trying to get away from what he did, I'm not trying to do what he did. I'm trying to be myself. In the end, the character will be a result of who I am and what I bring to the part."

Ultimately, the fate of the show is in Tharp's hands, a challenge she seems to relish. "Getting performances out of people is extremely creative and, in the long run, that's what directing is about. It doesn't matter whether you're creating a dance for the first time, or working with old material. It's up to you to make it work."

Adds Green: "Obviously we think the show has a chance to be wonderful. Hopefully it will have to have the easy improvisational feeling that the movie had. And above all, it has to convey joy, because that's what Singin' in the Rain is all about." 

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