If I've said it once here, I've said it a thousand times. The Reprise! Theater Group is an organization that stages musical revivals for short runs on shorter budgets. Four times per subscription season, they mount some semi-lavish production up at Freud Hall at UCLA with minimal sets and even more minimal rehearsal time. But there's always a maximum of talent and it makes up for an awful lot.
Case in point: Last night was opening night of a new production that'll be up there until August 26. It's On Your Toes, the 1936 show by Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart and George Abbott. The show isn't performed much these days and it's easy to see why. The book is outdated. In fact, it was probably outdated in 1936…a silly story about a Music Professor who'd rather be a dancer. He gets involved in an attempt to convince a Bolshoi-like ballet company from Russia to stage an American jazz ballet and at some point, he becomes a performer in the company and you really don't care about it or all the other people involved in it. You're just there to hear the songs by Rodgers and Hart which, in this case, aren't the kind of ones that made their reputation. Only one — "There's a Small Hotel" — was at all familar to theatergoers last night and it isn't even that great a tune.
So it sounds like I had a lousy time and I must admit that there were a few stretches in Act One when I did. But the show picked up and through sheer talent, the cast and director drove this one across the finish line. Doing so much with so little, they made it all work.
Let me mention some of those people. Dan Mojica directed and he figured out how to get laughs on some pretty thin material. Jeffry Denman starred as the Music Teacher and was positively electric, bringing a lot of Fred Astaire to the proceedings and getting laughs where none were written. Stefanie Powers played the rich lady who manages the ballet troupe and she seems to have aged about a week since she was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. She had a nice star turn and handled her musical numbers quite well. (One joke was added to the script to reference her run as co-star of Hart to Hart.) Dan Butler played the Russian impresario and Beth Malone played the Music Teacher's love interest. Gerald Sternbach was the Musical Director, providing a lush sound, and Lee Martino devised the sensational choreography. The dancing, which was quite plentiful, went a long way to making up for the shortcomings of the storyline.
I think I'd recommend it to anyone but with the caution that you kind of need to forget about the plot and just enjoy the performances. Jason Alexander is now the Artistic Director for Reprise! because, I guess, he squandered all his Seinfeld money and needed a job. Anyway, during the post-show party, an audience member interrupted a conversation he was having with a group of us to tell him they loved the show but thought the story was boring. Jason smiled and said, "Yes, well, we couldn't do much about that." He's right. But it was fun seeing a talented crew rise above the material and entertain so much in spite of it.