Shower’s the power of classic musical

In the end, it all came down to the rain.

During Spokane Civic Theatre’s opening night production of “Singin’ in the Rain,” the audience clapped loudest and longest for the cloudburst itself. In the signature scene, Andrew Ware Lewis tap-danced his way through an onstage downpour, complete with iconic umbrella and lamppost.

This rain didn’t drip. It didn’t sprinkle. It didn’t mist. It poured down in wide sheets, and it splatted.

This storm was a technical highlight that kept a two-person crew mopping and drying the stage throughout one very long intermission.

As a community theater, Civic often presents musicals with a “Hey, gang, let’s give a show” sense about them. A magnet for anyone who ever dreamed of appearing before the stage lights, these productions often feature several high points surrounded by weaker moments that any kind-hearted critic is likely to gloss over.

This production seemed a reach directed by Kathie Doyle-Lipe that almost exceeded her crew’s grasp. But it, too, had its moments. Lewis, in the Gene Kelly role, danced ably and sang well, bringing a warmth and smoothness to the part of the silent screen matinee idol.

Alyssa Calder-Day, as the stage actress with the lovely voice, captured the innocence of the era with her dark mop of curls and her sweet, charming pout. She danced gracefully and projected the wholesomeness audiences expected of their heroines in that time.

Cameron Lewis, as Andrew Ware Lewis’ sidekick, tap-danced up a storm. His performance wavered between just the right amount of cocksure Broadway show-boy cleverness and a physical comedy that frequently tipped right over the top.

Similarly, Doyle-Lipe had Corinne Logarbo play the stage actress with the screechy voice from Hoboken broadly. But Logarbo gave us a memorable rendition of the bottle-blonde sparkler with the low-wattage noggin.

And while Dougie Dawson turned his studio exec into a handlebar-mustachioed ham, Thomas Heppler brought us a funnier, smoother character in the film director, Roscoe Dexter.

Sets for this musical appeared to be a weak point, with scenes often appearing too low-budget or too bare. On opening night, there were technical difficulties with a backdrop that kept getting hooked up in the scenery and a film that wound up being projected off to one side of the screen.

Of course, the thin plot of this musical involves the transition between silent films and motion pictures. Brown and Lewis play an on-screen romantic pair who can’t weather the change, mainly because the actress yaps like a New Jersey chipmunk.

We see black-and-white films during the play that portray them first as successful silent film stars and then as a mismatched horror. It’s Calder-Day’s character who steps up to save their careers.

These movies themselves, also directed broadly, capture the antic quality of the silent film days, as well as the technical difficulties of the early talkies. They’re filled with comic moments, some of them clever, others just way too silly.

And in the end, that was true of the play itself, a production that managed to make everyone happy again by bringing on the rain.

The glorious feeling of this play poured down in one giant splash.