Jason Alexander’s first season as Artistic Director of Reprise! Broadway’s Best is
off to a bang-up start with one of Reprise's most accomplished productions
yet, a revival of Rodgers and Hart’s On Your Toes. The best
choreographed/best danced show of the past twelve months (in a year that
has included the superbly danced Can-Can and Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers), On Your Toes is a tuneful toe-tapping delight from start to finish.

You do have to overlook the book, though.  Remember that this is 1930s
Broadway, pre Oklahoma, when shows were built around songs, with books
designed simply to string them together, kind of like today’s jukebox musicals,
though even the unfairly maligned Mamma Mia has a more compelling
storyline than On Your Toes. But so what? It doesn’t matter that Rodgers and
Hart along with George Abbott constructed a silly tale about a vaudeville
child hoofer grown into college professor who is suddenly asked to dance the
lead with a Russian ballet.  The songs and dances are what counts, and the
ample opportunities they offer for a huge ensemble cast to shine and dazzle.

Broadway’s Jeffry Denman (from 2005’s White Christmas at the Pantages) is
the ultimate triple threat as vaudeville baby Phil Dolan III turned nerdy prof. 
Tall, lean, and lanky and wearing horn-rimmed glasses that reflect the lights of
UCLA’s Freud Playhouse like a mirror ball, Denman is a sensational musical
theater comic leading man in the tradition of Ray Bolger and Bobby Van (who
played the role on Broadway in the original 1936 and 1954 revival productions).

Coming right off her triumph in Can-Can at the Pasadena Playhouse is
danceuse extraordinare Yvette Tucker (who also stole the show in last year’s
Never Gonna Dance at MTW.) Tucker is Russian ballet superstar diva Vera
Baronova, and boy does she get to show her stuff, not only as a superb dancer
(and ballerina) but as an absolutely delightful and charming comedienne.
Speaking of divas and matching Tucker every step of the way is recent
Broadway transplant Jonathan Sharp (chorus boy standout in Can-Can),
center stage here as Vera’s feuding ballet costar and boyfriend Konstantine
Morrosine, so full of himself that you think he just may burst.  Tucker and Sharp
show their eclectic dance training with gorgeous balletic moves rarely called
upon in musical theater.

The “adults” in the cast are Stefanie Powers and Dan Butler, she as theatrical
maven Peggy Porterfield and he as Russian impresario Sergei Alexandrovitch. 
Powers (hard to believe she’s been a star for 45 years!) is glamorous and a
good singer, and she gets one of the biggest laughs of the evening when she
asks Butler for a “heart to heart.”  (From the original script?) Butler, best known
for TV’s Frasier, is wonderfully funny, and the two get to duet three times, most
notably in You Took Advantage of Me.

Beth Malone is her usually cute and sparkly self as Frankie, one of professor
Dolan’s prize pupils, and she shows off her lovely voice in Glad to Be Unhappy. 
Brett Ryback is the handsomest guy on stage as fellow student (and
composer) Sydney. Ryback’s one of the few musical theater performers who's
also a talented pianist as well as singer, both of which he gets to do in the
show. (BTW, he’s also a musician, composer, and playwright in real life.)

And how about that wow of a supporting cast, for this is truly an ensemble
show, with the seven leads sharing stage time pretty much equally, and the
rest of the cast each getting his/her chance to shine. John Vaughan, Diane
Vincent, and Quintan Craig hoof up a storm in the show’s opening number
Two a Day for Keith, and Vincent later returns as the scene stealingest and
frumpiest maid you may ever see. Jeff Griggs (still among the two or three
best comic performances of the year for Twentieth Century) has a ball playing
Brooklyn gangster Louie Capitelletti.

Choreographer Lee Martino (one of our very best!) has cast the finest and
most experienced young dancers in the southland, all the more amazing for
having learned all this in 6 days. Shell Bauman, Seth Belliston, and Scott Weber
(ballet vets all three despite their youth) get the biggest chance to shine as
the three Russian suitors in La Princesse Zenobia Ballet, which concludes Act 1.
Jennie Ford, Casey Garritano, Chelsea Hackett, Joseph T. Marshall, Melissa
Emilie Paris, Aaron Pomeroy, Mark C. Reis, Katie Rooney, Sarah Spradlin-
Bonomo, Leslie Stevens, and John Todd all deserve highest marks for their
superlative dancing, especially in the ovation inspiring On Your Toes number, a
showdown between toe and tap dancers, and the legendary Act 2 finale,
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue Ballet.  (Oh, and they sing too!)

Dan Mojica directed this all with his accustomed brilliance, and there’s no one
better at the piano and baton than musical director Gerald Sternbach,
whose On your Toes orchestra provides quite possibly the richest sounds we’ve
heard this past year.  Brett Banakis’ scenic design is Reprise simple, but
effective, and his lighting design complements the musical numbers perfectly. 
Shon LeBlanc’s costumes are once again as good as it gets.

Reprise! has undertaken the challenge of an extra show this season, up from
three to four. If On Your Toes is any indication, Jason Alexander’s reign as
Artistic Director is likely to be a stellar one. Overlook (or just enjoy) the silliness of
the book and you will find plenty to love in On Your Toes!
Freud Playhouse, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood  Through Aug. 26
Sundays: 2 p.m. 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8:00, Saturdays at 2:00, Sundays
at
2:00 and 7:00    $70-$75  Box office: 310-825-2101

--Steven Stanley