Palos Verdes Performing Arts welcomes a fabulous lead cast and twenty of L.A.’s most precision tappers for their crowd-pleasing revival of Gower Champion’s 1980 Broadway megasmash 42nd Street.

T The audience has only just finished applauding a “Greatest Hits” overture when the curtain rises just high enough to reveal several dozen legs tap-dancing as if their careers depended on it … and as any Broadway buff will tell you, the avenue you’re being taken to is naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty, 42nd Street.

 Ashley Ruth Jones stars as Peggy Sawyer, freshly arrived in Manhattan from Allentown, PA with nothing but a suitcase full of dreams, a lucky yellow scarf, and a big bundle of talent.

Though seasoned male ingénue Billy Lawlor (Austin MIller) is immediately taken with Peggy, a (literal) run-in with famed Broadway director Julian (Kevin Bailey) does not put the would-be star in the director’s good graces, nor is diva extraordinaire Dorothy Brock (Sandy Bainum) likely to be charmed by a singer-actress who can actually cut the rug.

 (Double-threat Dorothy’s “dance talents” are restricted to graceful arm movements while bona fide hoofers do their complex choreography around her.)

As anyone who’s seen the 1933 Warner Brothers movie musical classic or its Broadway adaptation can tell you, a bit of bad luck for Dorothy provides Peggy with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an overnight Broadway star in Julian’s Pretty Lady—if only she can master 25 pages, 6 songs and 10 dance numbers and thereby “save the show,” all within 36 hours.

 No one need doubt the outcome of this prodigious endeavor (this being musical comedy after all), and many if not most in the audience will be able to mouth along with Julian the classic words, “You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”

Featuring one Harry Warren-Al Dubin song smash after another, a book as cleverly written as Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble’s, and director-choreographer Christine Negherbon’s spot-on recreation of Champion’s original Broadway vision (with some personal touches of her own), 42nd Street delivers the entertainment goods, and then some, including more show-stopping dance numbers than have probably ever been put in a single Broadway musical, “Shadow Waltz,” “Getting Out Of Town,” “Dames,” “We’re In The Money,” “Lullaby Of Broadway,” and the title song among them.

 Jones’s Peggy combines equal parts spunk, vim, and charm, sings sensationally, and makes us believe that a Broadway neophyte could indeed tap her way to overnight stardom while charming Bailey’s dynamic, charismatic Julian and Miller’s eternally boyish, ever peppy Billy and turning Bainum’s screwball-licious diva of a Dorothy green with envious enmity, all four Equity leads showing off Broadway-caliber vocal chops.

 Bernadette Bentley’s bold and brassy Anytime Annie and her three best gal pals (the equally splendid Melanie Mockobey as Phyllis Dale, Deborah Fauerbach as Lorraine Flemming, and Jessica Marie Taylor as Gladys) provide vivacious support, with Ann Myers and Cole Cuomo stealing scenes as songwriting team Maggie Jones and Bert Barry, and Timothy Joshua Hearl’s salt-of-the-earth Pat Denning and Greg Nicholas’ Texas sugar daddy Abner Dillon giving Dorothy two decidedly different romantic options to choose from.

 Assistant choreographer Keenon Hooks’ musical-within-a-musical dance captain Andy Lee leads a triple-threat ensemble whose tap expertise rivals Broadway’s best–Ryan Chlanda (Bartender), Sam Chlanda, Kyle Compton (Waiter), Erin Dubreuil, Brian Eid (Thief), Julia Franklin (Diane Lorimer), Kenny Gary (Messenger), Layli Kayhani (Ethel), Ty Koeller, Janelle Lillian, Niko Montelibano (Thug #1), Brady Stanley (Thug #2), and Alissa Wilsey, with special dance snaps to Eid’s balletic Thief in the stunning title-tune sequence.

Though the production could benefit from a classier set than Candlelight Pavilion’s, The Theatre Company’s colorful period costumes (coordinated by Diana Mann) and Anthony Gagliardi’s 1930s wigs are numerous and nifty and vibrantly lit by Brandon Hawkinson.

Musical director Ryan O’Connell conducts 42nd Street’s topnotch 13-piece pit orchestra, with sound designer John Nobori providing an expert mix of vocals and instrumentals throughout the show.

42nd Street is produced by Chris Gilbert. Chris Warren Murry is stage manager.

 Broadway’s 42nd Street may be edging towards its 40th birthday (and the movie that inspired it now celebrating its 85th), but you’d never know it at Palos Verdes Performing Arts. Fresher than ever, it’s the most taptastic show in town.

Norris Theatre, 27570 Crossfield Drive, Rolling Hills Estates.
www.PalosVerdesPerformingArts.com

–Steven Stanley
April 28, 2018
Photos: Ed Krieger

Tags: Al Dubin, Harry Warren, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mark Bramble, Michael Stewart, Palos Verdes Performing Arts