A musical can have hit potential where songs, dances, performances, and production design are concerned, however without a compelling, coherent book to grab an audience, it can still end up a miss, case in point the 3-plus-hour-long retro jukebox musical One For My Baby, now getting its World Premiere at North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre.

 The songs, 24 of them in all, are by composer Harold Arlen and a quartet of lyricists*, and though I’m guessing that only musical theater fanatics well past retirement age will have even the slightest idea of who Arlen is, even those without an AARP card may have heard such Arlen classics as “Get Happy,” “Down With Love,” “Come Rain Or Come Shine, “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Stormy Weather,” “Blues In The Night,” and “One For My Baby,” titles that represent only a third of the Arlen catalog featured in the show.

The dance numbers are almost as plentiful, choreographed with oodles of oomph by director Scott Thompson, and featuring a cast of L.A.-and-New York-based hoofers who can swing, tap, and high-kick with the best of them.

Performers don’t get any more stellar than leading ladies Lana Gordon and Luba Mason, and the show’s major supporting players are every bit as talented as those two Broadway-vet leads in delivering powerhouse vocal after powerhouse vocal.

 Shon LeBlanc’s costumes and Carter Thomas’s hair designs are as pitch-perfectly 1940s as can be, evoking fashions and dos straight out of WWII-era 20th Century Fox Betty Grable/Alice Faye movie-musical fare while Paul Black gives One For My Baby the flashiest of nightclub sets and lights it with plenty of pizzazz.

Still, for One For My Baby (or any musical for that matter) to succeed, an audience needs characters they can care about and stories they can get invested in, and in the case of this Broadway hopeful, Thompson and Fred Barton’s book tries to squeeze in too many characters and too many stories between the production’s two-dozen songs and at least a dozen dance numbers for any of them to be given more than short shrift.

 Indeed I spent much of the first act’s ninety-minute running time trying to figure out just who was who and what their individual stories were.

Here’s what I came up with.

 First up is Panama Jones (Gordon, sizzling in the role), a late, great nightclub diva who narrates One For My Baby from purgatory, an unnecessary framing device whose excision could chop off ten or fifteen minutes from a musical whose 8:00 opening night performance ended at 11:15.

A dazzling Mason plays high society blonde bombshell Tess, whose latest much younger boy toy is tall, dark, and handsome Rick Anderson (C.J. Eldred), though not for long if Tess’s rival Meredith Allen (Lianne Marie Dobbs) is concerned.

Phil Pritchard plays mob-connected nightclub owner Duke Sullivan, whose casting couch could spell finito for ingenue dance couple Eddie Parsons (Sean McGibbon, a contemporary Donald O’Connor) and Kitty McVey (Jess Val Ortiz) if she hops onto it as she’s likely to do.

Jackie James (Amber Wright) finds her romantic involvement with fellow dancer Keith Nelson (Harris Matthew) jeopardized by his gambling habit, though boy oh boy that man can dance.

And all of the above isn’t counting sassy cigarette girl Ethel (Natalie Holt MacDonald), the unfortunately named Detective Loretta (sorry make that Laretta) played by Eric Toms, and the ubiquitous Joe The Bartender (Luke Steinborn).

On paper this might not seem all that confusing, but given how little time each story is allotted between song-and-dance-numbers, you’ll likely find yourself midway through the show’s almost equally long second act before you catch on to exactly who is doing what to whom.

 That’s not to say that One For My Baby isn’t entertaining, which it is, or that its cast (completed by song-and-dance champs Keaton Brandt, Ryan Cody, Barb Erfurt, Emma Featherstone, assistant choreographer Sylvie Gosse, Brittany Rose Hammond, Shira Jackman, Danielle LaRauf, Max Larsen, assistant choreographer Mark Marchillo, Camal Pugh, Charlotte Scally, Olivia Schuh, Krystle Rose Simmons, Alec Talbott, Chad Vaught, Jeremy Ward, and Kelsee Woods) don’t deliver one power-packing performance after another, which they do.

It’s simply that for One For My Baby to make it beyond the El Portal, significant trims are in order, and that’s assuming that there’s an audience eager for a musical as old-fashioned in style as this one is at a time when it’s more cutting-edge fare like Hamilton, Hadestown, and Hell’s Kitchen that are packing them in.

 One For My Baby is presented by All Roads Theatre Company in association with Barton, Sheri Clark Henrikson, Jeramiah Peay, Josie Yount, and Brian Zucker.

Arranger Barton conducts the production’s top-of-the-line onstage orchestra. Properties are by Bouket Fingerhut. Joel Daavid is technical director. Robert Levinstein is production stage manager. Steve Moyer is publicist.

 At the very least audiences are guaranteed a whole lot of fabulously performed songs and dances for their money, and since tickets aren’t cheap, that’s a definite plus. Those hoping for more, however, may end up feeling shortchanged.

*Ted Koehler (whose name is misspelled in the program), Johnny Mercer, E.Y. Harburg, and Ira Gershwin

The El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Through March 23. Thursday and Friday at 8:00. Saturday at 3:00 and 8:00. Sunday at 3:00.
www.allroadstheatreco.org

-Steven Stanley
March 14, 2025
Photos: Billy Bennight

Tags: All Roads Theatre Company, El Portal Theatre, Fred Barton, Harold Arlen, Los Angeles Theater Review, Scott Thompson