Flapstick

Goodspeed's Nanette sets out for one last fling

by Steve Vineberg

NO, NO, NANETTE Book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. Music by Vincent Youmans. Lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach. Adapted by Burt Shevelove. Directed and choreographed by Stephen Terrell. Musical direction by F. Wade Russo. Sets designed by Howard Jones. Costumes by Suzy Benzinger. Lighting by Mary Jo Dondlinger. With Ellen Harvey, Mark Martino, Andrea Chamberlain, Joel Carlton, Margery Beddow, Gerry Vichi, Marilyn Cooper, Tanya Kay Perkins, Donna Lynne Champlin, and Jessica Wright. At the Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, Connecticut, through October 2. THE VOICE: You will be known . . . as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.

BEAUTY (In a whisper): Will I be paid?

THE VOICE: Yes, as usual -- in love.

BEAUTY (With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips): And will I like being called a jazz-baby?

THE VOICE (Soberly): You will love it . . .

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

The flapper, invented by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Elinor Glyn on the page, arrived on the Broadway musical stage in a thoroughly benign version in shows like the 1925 No, No, Nanette. The title character, barely out of adolescence, resists her conservative boy friend's attempts to sweep her into marriage before she's had a chance to enjoy her youth. But in the Otto Harbach-Frank Mandel script -- considerably retooled by Burt Shevelove for the successful 1971 revival that brought both director/choreographer Busby Berkeley and his favorite leading lady, Ruby Keeler, out of retirement for a last fling -- what Nanette has in mind amounts to a harmless weekend in Atlantic City, tea-dancing and romping on the beach with a band of twentysomethings. In No, No, Nanette, the flapper spirit amounts to the desire to go to not-too-wild parties and wear beaded dresses and spread a little cash around: in the Shevelove version, the canny, free-spending Lucille has to talk her best friend Sue, Nanette's aunt, into treating herself to a good time with some of her Bible-selling husband Jimmy's three-quarters-of-a-million. Meanwhile Jimmy and his lawyer, Lucille's husband Billy, have to figure out how to get rid of the three money-mad jazz babies, recipients of Jimmy's generosity, who show up to blackmail him. Even this wrinkle in the plot is purely innocent -- Jimmy's never laid a finger on any of them. He's merely made them the beneficiaries of his philosophy, as expressed in the Irving Caesar lyric: "I want to be happy/But I can't be happy/Till I make you happy, too."

It's quite the silliest of musicals, and in the erratic but good-natured production currently at the Goodspeed Opera House, the silliness is perfectly agreeable. The director/choreographer, Stephen Terrell, brings the show in at a clip -- three acts in two hours and 10 minutes -- so you don't have much time to think about the plot. Mostly you're meant to listen to the Vincent Youmans music. Youmans wasn't a first-rate composer; in his era (his Broadway career was short, beginning in 1921 and ending in 1932) he was overshadowed by Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Berlin and Rodgers. But he was popular enough to gain him a mention in one of Porter's lyrics: "Some gifted humans/Like Vincent Youmans/Might think that your song is bad . . ."And No, No, Nanette contains his two most famous numbers, Jimmy's anthem "I Want To Be Happy" and "Tea for Two," a duet for the ingenue (Andrea Chamberlain) and her beau Tom (Joel Carlton, a tenor with Tim Robbins looks and considerable charm) -- as well as "Too Many Rings Around Rosie," "I've Confessed to the Breeze," and the irresistible "You Can Dance with Any Girl."

The songs are typically well sung at the Goodspeed, though Andrea Chamberlain's post-Barbara Cook delivery is a little shrill and her style a little precious for my taste. And Margery Beddow, as Sue, isn't much of a dancer -- a definite drawback, since the Shevelove script was shaped, for Ruby Keeler, to build to her third-act "Take a Little One-Step" breakout. So no doubt you'll find yourself focusing on the other flapper, Ellen Harvey's Lucille, who has a commanding warble and can make her spectacular long legs do anything she wants them to. She also sports easily the best of Mary Jo Dondlinger's outfits -- though lanky Harvey has the kind of body that clothes love to hang on. (Dondlinger does well with the men in the cast, too -- the chorus boys wear nifty rainbow vests at one point -- but Harvey is the only woman on stage whose dresses don't make you cringe. The women in the ensemble show up for the third-act party decked out like circus performers.) As Billy, Mark Martino partners Harvey adeptly, and Gerry Vichi (as Jimmy) and Marilyn Cooper (as Pauline, the wisecracking maid) get most of the laughs. Cooper, in the scene-stealing part Patsy Kelly played the last time around, weds a slight lisp to a Shirley Booth vocal attack -- a winning combo. These performers (including Joel Carlton) help the evening to pass pleasantly, though this isn't one of the Goodspeed's memorable revivals.