After a couple of midwinter missteps, New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse is bounding back to what it does best. The revival of the 1992 “new” Gershwin musical, “Crazy for You,” defines musical comedy at its happiest, singing and dancing with gleeful abandon.
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The production, which will be taped for a fall airing on PBS’ “Great Performances,” is a kind of amalgam of the original Broadway production with participating members of the London and Melbourne casts plus various touring companies from Toronto to Sacramento. The handsome cast functions as a unified ensemble, yet each character is personalized with keenly defined little touches. The result is a finely tuned potpourri of talent. And the show’s 10 glamorous show girls are the leggiest beauties on the boards this spring.
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Susan Stroman’s original choreography has been re-created lovingly by Angelique Ilo with dazzling perfection, especially the rousing first act curtain of “I Got Rhythm,” in which dancers twirl pickaxes and dance on corrugated tin panels accompanied by the beat of mining pans and rubber plungers. “Slap That Bass” remains one of the most imaginative routines of the past decade, as the cowpokes pluck on ropes held taut by the gals strung up as human bass fiddles.
Ken Ludwig’s silly, yet infectious book (very loosely based on the l930 “Girl Crazy”) is generously spiced with gooney puns and pratfalls, yet every comic turn nicely segues into yet another delicious Gershwin tune.
Jim Walton as Bobby Child, a banker/playboy whose dilapidated music hall in a deserted Nevada mining town goes into foreclosure, has tapped his way straight from the recent “Encores!” production of “Ziegfeld Follies of 1936” over the river to the Millburn stage. Walton invests the role with boyish charm and goofy exuberance, and his smart and graceful hoofing is a constant joy.
Stacey Logan, a chorine in the ’92 Broadway version, has graduated to the role of Polly, a rural buckskin desert bloom. She makes a comely dancing partner for Walton, and sweetly sings such evergreens as “But Not for Me” and “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
Repeating their Broadway turns are Jane Connell, delightfully dithery as a tyrannical family matriarch, and Bruce Adler as a harried Hungarian impresario named Zangler. Also on target is Sandy Edgerton as a seductive socialite, Irene Roth, and Jeb Brown as her ornery prey, barkeep Lank Hawkins.
The show has been staged by vet song and dance man James Brennan, and he has mounted a spirited, heady mix of groaning gags and bright melodies with a firm and knowing hand.
Certainly the Gershwin celebration didn’t end with the birthday centennial last year. The beloved tunes of George and Ira are old friends, never losing their captivating allure and rhythmic appeal. From the whimsical “Could You Use Me?” to the ardent romanticism of “Embraceable You” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” the legacy remains in sure and safe hands.
The Millburn’s new millennium season opens this fall with a tidy tandem set of Stephen Schwartz tuners, “Pippin” and the rarely produced “Rags,” followed by Romberg’s “The Student Prince” and “Funny Girl.”