All those young fresh faces, full of hope and exuberance and effort, working for their big break.

Watching the youthful, talented but green cast of Footloose at Town Hall Arts Center is like catching an episode of American Idol - without the bickering of the judges.

Based on the 1984 teen flick about a Chicago boy who moves to a small town and can't abide their no-dancing ways, Footloose is a throwaway 1998 Broadway musical laden with '80s pop songs from the movie and tedious, Sondheim-lite filler tunes.

Director and choreographer Nick Sugar has spent the last few years cultivating performers who eagerly follow him from production to production. In Footloose, theirs aren't always the biggest roles, but they can provide some of the most fun.

There's Phillip Martin, who showed his dancing skills as Snoopy in the Aurora Fox's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and in Town Hall's A Chorus Line. Here, he brings a comic sweetness to the countrified sidekick, Willart.

Amanda Earls, Lucy to Martin's Snoopy, is part of a trio of high school girls. She stands out with her brassy voice and comic ways, as does the emphatic slapper Monique S. Jacques.

The leads, PatricCase as Ren McCormack and Melissa Benoist as Ariel Moore, are sweetly matched and voiced. Benoist makes an ideal teen queen, her singing and her rebellion ringing true.

Sugar does nice work choreographing a cast of good and so-so dancers to fill the stage. But elements of this production feel slapdash. Rather than a live band, the company performs to prerecorded tracks. The set consists primarily of gym lockers and light towers; an upstage projection is underused, and, as a result, several scenes seem to occur in some nebulous space. And, in a pattern in the youthful shows at Town Hall, both male heroes and villains are on the diminutive side, hard to buy in High School Land, where appearance is everything.

Footloose is an easy show to sit through, but it may not have you on your feet.

Footloose

• Grade: C+

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through March 25, Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 W. Main St., Littleton

• Cost: $16 to $33

• Information: 303-794-2787 or www.townhallartscenter.com