1990s teen romcom fans in particular won’t want to miss Rockwell Table & Stage’s latest musical-comedy romp, Never Been Kissed: The Unauthorized Musical.

Lana McKissack takes over for Drew Barrymore as frumpy 25-year-old L.A. Times copy editor Josie Geller (2000 miles west of the 1999 movie smash’s Chicago Sun-Times), who might just accomplish her dream of becoming an honest-to-goodness reporter if she can ace the assignment she’s as long last been given by editor-in-chief Rigfort (Matt Shively), i.e., to go undercover as a 17-year-old high school student and write a tell-all expose about teen life today.

Trouble is, Josie’s high school years were hell, and her return to campus life looks to be no more heavenly than the first time round, at least not with co-worker Anita (Amanda Shechtman) serving as her ill-advised fashion guru.

It takes only seconds for mean-girl clones Kirsten (Natalie Masini), Kristin (Shechtman), and Gibby (Markesha Chatfield) to mock the white feathered atrocity Josie sports on her first day at South Coast South High School and dreamboat Billy (Erron Crawford) seems as far out of her reach as the popular boy she crushed on in her own disastrous school days, leaving genius nerd Aldys (Katie Self) Josie’s only friend and English teacher Sam (Nathan Moore) her handsome mentor.

Fortunately for our hapless heroine, Josie’s 23-year-old brother Rob (Shively) is more than eager to come to older sis’s rescue by himself enrolling at South Glen South, a two-birds-with-one-stone gambit intended not just to help popularize Josie with the cool kids but also to give Rob the chance to rewrite his own failed high school dream of parlaying success on the baseball diamond into a professional career.

 Rockwell regulars who fretted that the end of writer-director Kate Pazakis’s much loved UMPO series would mean the last of the Los Feliz venue’s unauthorized takeoffs on movie/TV favorites can rest assured that the concept Pazakis pioneered is in expert hands, since who better to carry on than longtime collaborators E.K. Dagenfield and Pablo Rossil, who along with Never Been Kissed writer Jordan Ross Schindler, have produced a show that honors the UMPO concept while reuniting many of the same triple-threat stars that Rockwell patrons have come to love along with musical director extraordinaire Gregory Nabours and whiz choreographer Mallory Butcher.

Broadway/TV/Rockwell star Emma Hunton directs Never Been Kissed with the same ingenuity and flair that made her first foray in the director’s chair (UMPO: A League Of Their Own) a summer-of-2019 smash.

Schindler’s script sticks close to the movie original, with bits of offbeat, occasionally risque humor inserted throughout, and Drew Barrymore fans will be delighted to relive their favorite scenes, from Josie’s egg-splattered prom-dress nightmare to Anita’s improvised banana-accesorized sex-ed lecture to Josie’s pitcher’s mound wait for the kiss she’s dreamed of her whole life.

Of course there’d be no Never Been Kissed: The Unauthorized Musical without the music, and this time round at least three-dozen Top 40 hits (made popular by artists as diverse as Whitney Houston, Bruce Sprinsteen, Bon Jovi, Foreigner, and The Beach Boys) get performed by as vocally gifted a cast as you’ll see any time soon.

McKissack’s star turn is the radiant sun around which seven supremely talented planets revolve, the Rockwell favorite investing Josie with equal parts goofy charm and plucky spirit, and some of the most powerhouse pipes in town.

Moore (McKissack’s real-live hubby) is as leading-man appealing as any undercover reporter could possibly hope to snag, and Shively (a big-voiced treat as both Josie’s hair-challenged editor and her hotshot brother) and Crawford (freshly graduated with an MFA from Yale and showing off Broadway-ready pipes and comedic chops to match) are just as terrific.

Chatfield, Masini, and Shechtman not only give Barbie a run for her money in the hot-chick department but ace their other roles, with special snaps to Shechtman’s spot-on Molly Shannon (as Anita).

Last but not least, Self makes as fabulous (and statuesque) an Aldys as she does Mrs. Knox, the teacher who helps turn Josie’s first day back at school into an unmitigated disaster.

Production designer Chadd McMillan makes inventive use of crisscrossing runways and assorted Rockwell nooks and crannies, Michelle Stann’s lighting design is a dazzler, and Zach Stauffer provides a crystal-clear sound design mix throughout.

Best of all are costumes certain to bring smiles of recognition to any Never Been Kissed fan with memories of Josie’s horrendous bubble of a pink satin prom dress or Aldys’s curve-clinging spandex prom onesie, to name just two.

Nabours, Liam Kevany, Brian Cannady, and Blake Estrada are the production’s rock-concert ready live band. Janaya Mahealani Jones and Ryan Stevens are swings.

Garrett Clayton is assistant director. Lauren Strigari is assistant choreographer. Kelby McClennan is production stage manager.

You don’t have to have seen Never Been Kissed: The (Authorized) Movie (or even think it’s all that good a film) to have the best possible time at Never Been Kissed: The Unauthorized Musical. I for one had a blast.

Rockwell Table & Stage, 1714 N. Vermont, Los Angeles.
www.rockwell-la.com

–Steven Stanley
February 1, 2020
Photos: Andrew Gomez

Tags: Jordan Ross Schindler, Los Angeles Theater Review, Rockwell Table & Stage