Merry Kay!

Light listening at NETC

by Steve Vineberg

OH, KAY! Book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. Music by George Gershwin. Lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Directed and choreographed by Michael Celularo. Musical direction by Kallin Johnson. Set designed by Tom Saupé. Costumes designed by Betty Lou Celularo. Lighting designed by Christopher Gates. With Nicole Bard, Anthony Morin, Michael Brindisi, Brenda Jenkins, John A. Leslie, Kevin McGee, Erin Jameson, Sylvia Faure, Tom Lydick, and John Dufault. A New England Theatre Company production, at Anna Maria College, Paxton, through November 21.

If you want an idea of what American musical comedies were like before Show Boat pioneered the notion of a book-centered musical, you can get it from Oh, Kay!, which the New England Theatre Company is currently reviving as its nod to the Gershwin centennial. In this lighthearted, utterly inconsequential show -- which was originally produced in 1926, the year before Show Boat -- the plot is part farce, part romantic comedy, the numbers spring off the merest hint of a set-up, and everyone gets to sing. Jerome Kern, working in collaboration with Guy Bolton and the English novelist P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves's creator), invented these buoyant, modern, small-scale shows. Oh, Kay! substitutes Gershwin for Kern and the rest is a thin but active storyline and a lot of vaudeville-style gags and one-liners. Johnny Winter (Anthony Morin) is the good-humored bridegroom, just returned home to Long Island, whose attempt to consummate his marriage to Constance Appleton (Brenda Jenkins) keeps getting sabotaged. Kay (Nicole Bard) is the bootlegger's sister he hides from the revenue man (Tom Lydick) who's out to capture her and her brother, the Duke (Kevin McGee). The Duke has stashed his illegal hooch in the basement of Johnny's house during his absence; his confederate, Shorty McGee (Michael Brindisi), pretends to be Johnny's newly hired butler so he can keep his eye on the goods. Shorty also helps Kay, who has fallen for the gallant Johnny, to liberate the groom from his bride.

It's a very silly play, but the jokes are enjoyable, and the score is, of course, its raison d'etre. Though not quite up to the best of Gershwin's musical-comedy scores, Lady, Be Good! and Funny Face, Oh, Kay! has some wonderful tunes -- "Someone To Watch Over Me," most famously, and also "Dear Little Girl," "Maybe," "Fidgety Feet," "Don't Ask," and the rousing, irresistible "Clap Yo' Hands," which offers a quintessential Ira Gershwin lyric: "On the sand of time you are only a pebble/Remember, trouble must be treated just like a rebel/Send him to the debbil!" Gertrude Lawrence sang some of these songs in the original production, and if you've heard her idiosyncratic quavering soprano and seen the photos of her in her flapper get-up, then it's hard to think of Oh, Kay! without thinking of her.

On the whole NETC's production is watchable but it lacks style. As an elegant backdrop for a breezy Long Island romance, Tom Saupé's set isn't convincing -- the furniture is ugly and doesn't match -- and Michael Celularo's staging is haphazard: the actors amble, and entrances and exits often look accidental. For some reason the lighting designer, Christopher Gates, turns the stage a deep pink for every number. When John A. Leslie, as the third bootlegger, Larry Potter, sits down to accompany himself on piano, he's in a different tempo from the small band in the wings. And there's no chorus, though it's obvious from the script that there's supposed to be one -- a bevy of young women who chase Jimmy around everywhere he goes. All that remains are the Ruxton twins (Erin Jameson and Sylvia Faure). The two actresses sure work hard, but they look uncomfortable standing in for an entire ensemble.

When the leads are around the show relaxes and the Gershwin champagne-and-Charleston feeling comes through. Nicole Bard is a game, bright-eyed Kay, though her lack of an English accent is puzzling considering the references in the dialogue to her title and to the problem of her not having an American passport. Bard is a terrific singer, so there's a considerable build-up to "Someone To Watch Over Me," which doesn't arrive until early in the second act; unfortunately Celularo hasn't given her anything to do while she performs it. Anthony Morin has the right quipster spirit to play Johnny, and he and Bard play off each other well enough so that you buy the romance. And Michael Brindisi is loose and funny as the bootlegger-turned-manservant, Shorty. Of the supporting cast, Tom Lydick comes off best as the dyspeptic revenue man, Jansen; everyone else looks a little strained, as if they weren't quite sure how they were coming across. They could have used more help. NETC must have had trouble recruiting singers (and furniture), and it's hard not to be on the side of a struggling, well-meaning company. But Oh, Kay!, modest as it is, presents certain incontrovertible demands. You can't do a Gershwin musical and not do one at the same time.