Moonlight Stage Productions is presenting the San Diego premiere of the 1998 musical which was inspired by the 1977 John Travolta dance drama film
It’s been 46 years since John Travolta strutted down the streets of Brooklyn in the edgy 1977 film “Saturday Night Fever.” On Wednesday, the 1998 jukebox musical inspired by the film finally made its San Diego premiere at the Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista.
But the show’s book, revised for its North American tour in 2017 by David Abbinanti and Sean Cercone, has almost none of the darkness, conflict and human drama of the film. As a result, it’s a nostalgic, feel-good song-and-dance show without much happening in between the well-crafted dance numbers.
Jenna Lee Rosen, who played Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” at the Moonlight in 2021, is a standout as Annette, Tony’s former dance partner who threatens to sleep around if he won’t date her. In the movie, the distraught and inebriated Annette gets gang-raped by Tony’s friends. In the musical, her fate is left unresolved, but Rosen does get to deliver the show’s best vocal performance with “If I Can’t Have You.
Music director and conductor Elan McMahan leads the synthesizer-enhanced orchestra, lighting was designed by Jennifer Edwards, sound by Jim Zadai, with rented costumes and sets.
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