The Gershwins combine a song stack of truly great songs often stuck attached to shows with scripts that simply aren't revivable without major surgery - leading to a number of newly compiled shows over the last 40 or so years from "My One and Only" to "Crazy For You" to the recent "An American in Paris" which combine highlights of the Gershwin song stack with plots vaguely reminiscent of previous shows. In this case, the work credited "Oh, Kay!", the work of Guy Bolton and PG Wodehouse, who worked together on a vast number of 1920s and 30s shows (up to and including the original unused script for Anything Goes), themselves adapting a french play by the prolific Pierre Veber, farceur of the late 19th-early 20th century, and grandfather of Francis Veber, author of the original french farces "La Cage Aux Folles", "The Dinner Game" and "The closet". Which is to say, this comes from experienced stock. Jo DiPeitro's updated script keeps the material firmly in the original 1920s period with bootleggers, a wealthy privileged idiot, madcap flappers, modern dancers, and censorious relatives all combining to set up a nonsensical farce that only makes sense while you're watching it.
The Hayes has treated this material with appropriate respect, which is to say it keeps everything light as a souffle. The mood's set early as the bar serves some very delightful Hard Tea with a hint of Long Island in it, and improves as you settle down in front of Simon Greer's stylishly adaptable Art Deco set, only for the cast to burst out into energetic song and dance. The plot unfolds smoothly and ridiculously, getting more complicated as it goes, and director/choreographer Cameron Mitchell finds maximum opportunity to fill the stage with dance and energy. The evening whizzes by as a spectacle of delight, knowing that it has no deeper purpose beyond showing off romance, glamour, and nonsense in speedy spectacle, played to perfection.
As the leads, Ashleigh Rubenach gives her heroine tough spunk and charm, while Rob Mallet is just the right kind of empty-headed nitwit to be likable as he throws himself into a variety of preposterous situations. Grace Driscoll as wanna-be dancer and prudish fiance Eileen takes a character who could easily be a one-note-dismissable-nitwit and gives her her own independent drive. Andrew Waldin as a co-plotter is great at playing the straight man to a lot of the nonsense, and Octavia Barron Martni and Sal Sharrah team up as the two largest nemeses to our heroes. Anthony Garcia dances up a storm as the third conspirator, and his impromptu hookup with Catty Hamilton's madcap flapper delights. Adorah Oloapu as the police chief looms with just the right mix of threat and her own sideways goofyness.
Damon Waede leads a great 5 piece band that sounds great throughout. There's a true sense that this is just the right energy for this show - a tight goofy comedy played full-out for everything it's worth, with exhilarating songs and dances. It's the kinda plot that you could nitpick later if you were feeling so inclined, but it works just well enough to remove all inclinations to do anything other than grin from ear to ear.
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