Tony Manero is back and tripping the strobe-light fantastic.
“Saturday Night Fever” (1977) turns 40 next year yet millennials are already busting John Travolta’s iconic moves in a pre-anniversary stage tour. “Saturday Night Fever — The Musical,” refreshed by Columbia Artists Theatricals, struts April 27 into the Rialto Square Theatre.
Unlike 2001 Odyssey — which hosted mobs of blue-collar Italian-American youths — 21st century theaters invite boomers to teens to bump-bump-bump together at this dancefest. Disco champ Tony would have bristled at upstarts invading his turf.
British actor-dancer Matthew Baker rightfully channeled his inner Tony before stepping into his platform shoes. He toured his alter ego’s haunts in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
“I saw the Manero house, the pizza restaurant you see in the movie, the dance studio,” said Baker, 27, in a call from Washington State, a stop on the 30-state tour. “You get the same sense of the neighborhood 40 years later. We went to the hardware store (where Travolta’s character worked). It’s very casual, everyone just getting by day by day.”
Sadly, the lanky Brit reports, the Spectrum — the Brooklyn club that doubled as the Odyssey, light-up floor and all — was razed years ago. But the street vibe was intact.
“I don’t think a lot of the spirit has changed,” said the London-trained Baker, a veteran of off-West End musicals. “Back then, everyone was living for the weekend, especially Tony Manero. He wasn’t long out of school and still had his old side job. He was spending money on his shirt and hair and clothes. People went out Saturday nights and showed what they had so they could go home with someone. It was their fix.”
Baker, a native of Kent, was unborn when Travolta strutted into his breakout role. The lad was 10 when the Nan Knighton-scripted stage show with the Bee Gees score debuted on Broadway in 1999. But he grew up listening to his parents’ disco LPs. His New York in-laws (Baker and his dancer-wife met in a cruise production of “Saturday Night Fever”) filled in the blanks.
“They said (the film) was exactly what it was like. We had pouffy hair, flared shirts, flared pants. You were out to impress,” he said.
His Brooklyn accent was easy. Baker studied dialects at Bird College, a performing arts school that funnels talents to London and Broadway stages. Few show-goers realize the star isn’t American, said castmate Yvonne Strumecki, the ex-Wrigleyville resident who plays Flo, Tony’s mother.
“When you speak to him in real life, it’s really different,” said Strumecki, a veteran of Light Opera Works shows in Evanston. “You can’t find a better Tony. He plays him with feelings, a lot of complex emotions … a man dealing with tough issues and trying to come into his own.”
Baker, determined to mesh his character’s dual lives as Brooklyn nobody and disco god, researched the real-life inspiration for Tony Manero, a blue-collar clerk who morphed into a star hoofer on weekends. Like many young men in his ‘hood, the original saw dance as his ticket to freedom.
For his film and stage predecessors, each sidelined by a dominating father, a troubled priest-brother, and dead-end jobs, the disco also represents an escape hatch. The arrival of Stephanie (Danielle Marie Gonzalez), a disco queen who dreams of a life in Manhattan, is a turning point for the fictional Tony.
“Tony realizes there’s something at the end worth fighting for,” Strumecki said.
Like the original film score, the jukebox musical cranks out the ’70s hits featuring Bee Gees chart-toppers including “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” “Jive Talkin’,” “You Should Be Dancing” and “How Deep Is Your Love.”
Between flashy song-and-dance numbers, some of the darker film elements remain. The disco years were more than days of grinds and poses. “There’s a lot of racial profiling and gang warfare. We’re not shying away from it. It’s important to keep that in there, so people remember how hard times were,” Baker said.
That said, the boogie man lives for the scene where he throws open a closet door and a spotlight illuminates The White Suit.
“It always gets a reaction,” Baker said. “You feel like a million dollars when you put it on.”
Molly Woulfe is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
‘Saturday Night Fever – The Musical’
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What: North American tour
When: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 27
Where: Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago St., Joliet
Info/Tickets: $36, $46, $56, $66 at Ticketmaster outlets, phone charge 800-745-3000 or 815-726-6600. Go to www.rialtosquare.com for more information.