A pair of thoroughly winning romantic leads brighten The Group Rep’s 99-seat revival of the 1968 Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David Broadway hit musical Promises, Promises, though an instance of historically incompatible gender reassignment does the production no favors.

Like Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, the 1960 Best Picture Oscar winner on which Simon’s book is based, Promises, Promises follows ambitious insurance company junior exec Chuck Baxter (an instantly likable Alec Reusch) as he attempts to Succeed At Business Without Really Trying, discovering that the road to career advancement begins with the key to his conveniently located $86.50-a-month West Side apartment, loaned out nightly to higher-ups in need of a place to take a decades-younger girl and “dance her around so fast, she starts to shout,” a Hal David lyric that most likely didn’t raise an eyebrow in the pre-#metoo 1960s.

Chuck, meanwhile, has his own romantic sights set on a fellow employee, i.e. the comely Fran Kubelik (Danica Waitley, a young Bernadette Peters), who seems at best only vaguely interested in her coworker despite Chuck’s frequent fantasizing to the contrary.

Unbeknownst to Chuck (and to you too should you opt to skip over this spoiler-revealing paragraph), Fran’s own sights have long been set on a band of gold that would bind her now and forever to her very much older (and very much married) boss J.D. Sheldrake, with whom she’s been carrying on a clandestine affair several nights a week, same time, same $86.50-a-month West Side place.

Like Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and Plaza Suite (the latter of which debuted the year before Promises, Promises), Simon’s bright and breezy book earns more than its fair share of laughs as over a dozen Burt Bacharach/Hal David songs (including “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,” “I Say A Little Prayer For You,” “A House Is Not A Home,” and the title tune) showcase the duo’s gift for blending Hal’s story-telling lyrics with Burt’s catchy tunes and trademark syncopation.

Not only that, but they provide the Group Rep choreographers Hisato Masuyama and Paul Reid ample opportunities to integrate exuberant dance moves along the way, beginning with the show’s Overture, an opening sequence that features the entire cast grooving to Bacharach’s distinctively ‘60s sound.

Under Brent Beerman’s direction, featured performances tend towards the (at times overly) broad, a notable exception being Kristina Reyes’ understated, terrifically acidic turn as Sheldrake’s secretary Miss Olsen.

Group Rep mainstay Stan Mazin plays a helpful if harried next-door doctor, Matthew Hoffman (stepping in for Masuyama at the performance reviewed), Diane Linder, Ray Mainenti, and Rob Schaumann are executives for whom cheating on their spouses is a way of life, and Kevin Michael Moran oozes so much creepiness as Sheldrake, you may find yourself wondering what Fran sees in him.

Jackie Shearn makes for a deliciously ditzy Marge MacDougall, with Giane Morris and Wendy Otto completing Promises, Promises’ delightfully multitasking female ensemble.

Andrew Nava and Renaud Gordon Warrick pop up occasionally in assorted cameos.

Best of all by far are the production’s two romantic leads, who make magic every time they take center stage.

Recent company member addition Reusch proves the ideal in-house choice to step into Jack Lemmon’s shoes as Chuck, a self-effacing charmer we can’t help but root for from the moment he first breaks the fourth wall.

Waitley matches her costar every step of the way, and if the Peters comparison pops to mind the second one catches sight of her curly red locks, she’s also got the kind of “signature” pipes that make every Fran song a showstopper.

Unfortunately, what was presumably an attempt to rectify the show’s pre-Women’s Lib misogyny by recasting one of the four cheating executives as a female bigwig backfires in its assumption that had a woman somehow managed to shatter the glass ceiling of the then virtually all-male corporate world, she would then have risked both job and reputation by chumming up with her macho colleagues and boinking just as many younger conquests as those male chauvinist horndogs, an assumption that made their scenes together uncomfortable for me to watch.

Music director-vocal arranger Kathi Chaplar elicits topnotch ensemble harmonies expertly mixed with prerecorded instrumental tracks.

Mareli Mitchel-Shields’ versatile set allows quick scene-and-locale changes aided by Melissa Bontempt’s cleverly designed graphic novel-style properties, including attaché cases that open up to reveal multiple hidden surprises.

Michael Mullen once again provides a bevy of colorful costumes, though I did find myself wondering whether we were in 1959 (per the director’s preshow remarks), in the JFK early-‘60s, or in the decade’s “mod” later years when the original production was set.

The effectiveness of Robbie Myles’s lighting design was hampered at the performance reviewed by a malfunctioning row of LED lights. Steve Shaw’s sound effects complete the production design package.

Lloyd Pedersen alternates with Mazin as Dr. Dreyfus. Chaplar is secretary swing.

Promises, Promises is produced for the Group Rep by Pedersen. Alyssa Rae is assistant director. John Ledley is stage manager. Nora Feldman is publicist.

With its Burt Bacharach-Hal David-Neil Simon-Billy Wilder pedigree, you’d think Promises, Promises would have gotten at least one fully-staged, fully orchestrated Equity-contract L.A. production in the last twenty years.

This, unfortunately, has not been the case, and though The Group Rep’s intimate revival would work considerably better minus the messing with historical reality, Reusch and Waitley deliver star turns I can’t help but cheer.

The Group Rep, Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood.
www.thegrouprep.com

–Steven Stanley
December 23, 2022
Photos: Doug Engalla

Tags: Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Los Angeles Theater Review, Neil Simon, The Group Rep