The Twenties roar and Gershwin tunes soar as Musical Theatre West gives L.A. its first taste of the 2012 Broadway delight that is Nice Work If You Can Get It.

 Nice Work takes a classic George and Ira Gershwin musical (the 1926 hit Oh, Kay!), gives it a brand new book by Joe DiPietro (from material by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse), stirs in a whole bunch of Gershwin Brothers smashes (among them “Someone To Watch Over Me,” “’S Wonderful,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “They All Laughed,” and of course the title tune), and to quote from Ira, “Who could ask for anything more?”

Both Oh, Kay! and the “new Gershwin musical” it inspired get things going with much-married man-about-town Jimmy Winter (Eric Sciotto), a band of Prohibition-era bootleggers, and four hundred or so cases of bathtub booze stashed unbeknownst to our hero in his Long Island beach house.

 Oh, Kay!’s titular English bootlegger is now a pants-wearing American named Billie Bendix (Kelley Dorney), aided and abetted by comic cohorts-in-crime Cookie (Jason Graae) and Duke Mahoney (Matt Merchant), with Jimmy’s latest bride (aka “the world’s finest interpreter of modern dance”) Eileen Evergreen (Melina Kalomas), Police Chief Berry (Andrew Metzger), chorus girl Jeannie Muldoon (Maryella Maloney), socially conservative Senator Max Evergreen (Doug Carfrae), and Jimmy’s high society mother Millicent Winter (Gloria Loring) along for the ride.

 Last but not least there’s Demon Rum’s greatest enemy, Society Of Dry Women founder Duchess Estonia Dulworth (Kathy Fitzgerald), who never goes anywhere without her very own hunks-only vice squad in tow.

Lines like “My father died in childbirth” and “Even though we just met, I already love you more than any of my other four wives” reveal book writer DiPietro’s delicious brand of camp, and since this is farce of the first order, Nice Work offers plenty of surprise plot twists and turns, abundant physical comedy, loads of absurd situations, and one false and/or mistaken identity after another.

 Larry Raben proves the ideal choice to direct these musical shenanigans, eliciting one delicious performance after another from his cast of L.A. favorites and a half-dozen or so New York visitors, tops among Sciotto, fresh from his dozenth Broadway show and ready to sing, dance, and charm with the best of them, whether jazzing it up in “Sweet And Lowdown” or romancing the big-voiced, fabulously feisty Dorney (doing her best Brooklynese and pseudo-Cockney) in song-and-dance duets like the title song, “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off,” and “ “S Wonderful.”

 Graae’s Cookie and Merchant’s Duke score laugh after laugh as a couple of classic low-level Hollywood gangsters, the former buttlering with the best of them, the latter managing to convince Maloney’s delightfully dumb Jeannie that he’s “The Duke Of England” who’ll someday make her his platinum blonde Queen.

 Fitzgerald’s Estonia is so bursting to break free from her straight-laced finger-pointing self that when she finally swings from a chandelier, the Broadway dynamo earns the kind of extended (and I do mean extended) ovation normally reserved for only the most show-stopping of production numbers.

 Equally scene-stealing is Kalomas, side-splittingly funny as the untouchable (and untouched) Eileen, channeling Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham at their most possessed, and just wait till she steps out of a bathtub along with a bevy of bathing beauties both female and male to dry her off.

Metzger follows Guys And Doll’s wonderfully wacky Nicely-Nicely with an equally wacky, organized crime-sniffing Chief Barry and Carfrae does the 1% proud as ultraconservative Senator Max.

 As for soap diva Loring, Days Of Our Lives fans will have to wait nearly two-and-a-half hours for her non-singing appearance, but no plot thread can be tied without the imperious deus ex machina Millicent.

Triple-threat ensemble members are each and every one a stunner, from leggy lovelies Katie Barna, Gillian Bozajian, Maggie Darago, Marisa Field, Annie Hinskton, and Jenna Lea Rosen to dapper dandies Nick Case, Danil Chernyy, Alec Cohen, Graham Keen, Karl Warden, and Louis A. Williams, dazzling again and again with choreographer Peggy Hickey’s eclectic, athletic, high-energy dance moves.

 Music Theatre Wichita provides Martin Pakledinaz’s original Broadway costume designs, from elegant high-society wear to scruffy low-life duds, and Derek McLane’s Broadway sets as scaled down for the 2015 non-Equity tour’s many one-night stands, and Paul Black lights them (and Anthony Gagliardi’s wigs and Marcie Baker’s properties) with pizzazz.

Both vocals and pit orchestra (one featuring not one but two grand pianos) sound fabulous thanks to musical director Dennis Castellano and Audio Production Geeks LLC’s Broadway-caliber sound design.

Kevin Clowes is technical director. Matt Terzigni is production manager. John “JP” Pollard is stage manager and Mary Ritenhour is assistant stage manager and company manager. Bill Burns is associate choreographer.

As familiar as the 20th-century song classics that propel it and as 21st-century as today, Nice Work If You Can Get It proves an entertainment bonanza for Gershwin fans from eight to eighty.

Musical Theatre West, Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach.
www.musical.org

–Steven Stanley
April 7, 2018
Photos: Caught In The Moment Photography

Tags: George Gershwin, Joe DiPietro, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre West