On the Town

FOUR STARS!

It doesn't get better than this. “Fancy Free” was the name of the ballet that inspired 'On The Town', the bustling 1944 triumph that a year later followed 'Oklahoma!' (World War II seemed to bring out the best in Broadway.) Well, every fancy is very free in David Bell’s utterly captivating, superbly successful revival of a musical that, incredibly, may never have been done in Chicagoland before. 70 years young, Marriott Theatre’s vastly entertaining salute to youth and joy was worth the wait.

Leonard Bernstein was barely a quarter century old when he poured his jazzy genius into his first hit. Infectious and crazy with sweet sounds, the unstoppable score is matched by a delightfully pell-mell tale. Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s roller-coaster plot celebrates the delights rather than the dangers of the big city, the transient happiness of wartime sailors on 24-hour shore leave, and the fresh fun of love on the run. After all its magnificent mayhem, we’re left with only winsome regrets of unfinished passion in the achingly poignant closing ballad “Some Other Time.”

Bursting into the contagious chorus “New York, New York,” three fresh-faced, happily hopeful sailors go on the town, embarking on crosstown whirlwind romances, nightclub-hopping, culture-seeking and other slambang adventures, all merrily chronicled by a score as supple as its complex composer. Thomas M. Ryan’s swift and sure set design takes us all over the Big Apple—a subway train, taxicab, Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Hall, the girls’ apartments, Diamond Eddie’s and the Slam Bang Clubs, the Congacabana, Coney Island, and finally, coming full circle, the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Just another day in glorious Gotham!

A Peoria boy-next-door in bellbottoms and with a killer smile, Chip (adorable Seth Danner) just wants to see the sights. But he becomes the sight for Hildy Esterhazy (Marya Grandy), a randy cab driver (“Come Back to My Place!”) who can cook too. This feisty female (a role that made Nancy Walker a star) industriously pursues the pretty tar—and her sweet stalking finally pays off.

Ozzie (hard-hoofing Jeff Smith) more than impresses Claire deLoone (Johanna McKenzie Miller), a museum anthropologist who at first takes him for a throwback caveman and leaves her dweebish scholar-husband Pitkin D. Bridgework (hilarious Alex Goodrich) in the lurch all over town.

Gabey (Max Clayton), the third raw recruit, instantly falls in love with the glorified image of this month’s “Miss Turnstiles” and enlists his pals and their gals to locate the multi-talented Ivy Smith (girl-next-door Alison Jantzie). He doesn't know that this poster girl is really a Coney Island cooch dancer under the thumb of her demented dance-class patroness Madame Maude P. Dilly (Barbara Robertson in manic overdrive). And somehow it just doesn't matter.

Never needing the star power of the film’s Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, [David] Bell’s go-for-broke staging keeps this three-ring comedy bubbling, bursting and rampaging, with the audience’s laughter as faithful an accompaniment as Bernstein’s irrepressible songs. Familiar and also rich discoveries, they’re so worth hearing for the first or 40th time as danced to perfection—Gabey’s winsome “Lonely Town” and his heartwarming “Lucky To Be Me,” the N.Y.C. pedestrians’ mannered “Carnegie Hall Pavane,” the chorines’ vaudevillian “So Long, Baby,” the mad romp “Coney Island Ballet,” Hildy’s insistent “You Got Me, Babe,” Claire’s repressed anthem “Carried Away,” the fashionable chanteuses’ torch song “I Wish I Was Dead,” even Pitkin’s liberation ballad “I Understand.”

Indeed, dance is everywhere, smoothly bridging scenes, a hulking procession of primitive men come to life in a museum diorama, the nightclub novelty numbers, and dream ballets that contrast the sailors’ soaring expectations and the city’s tempering reality.

Everything clicks—the set pieces and cityscapes that detonate so many rainbows, Nancy Missimi’s swing-era, Technicolor costumes, Jesse Klug’s playful to rhapsodic lighting, Ryan T. Nelson’s impeccable musical direction and, especially, Alex Sanchez’ eye-popping, mind-blowing, heart-stopping choreography. The young and proven ensemble are good as gold. Every moment on this arena stage is a tiny treasure. Call it the miracle in Lincolnshire.