Theatre in Review: Nice Work If You Can Get It (Imperial Theatre)

In Nice Work If You Can Get It, director/ choreographer Kathleen Marshall and company have set out to brew a Jazz Age cocktail with a bathtub gin kick. If the result is more like a Shirley Temple, that's not entirely bad; it is sweet, fizzy, and colorful. But large doses will cloy, and, at two hours and forty minutes, it is a very, very large dose. The one thing that might make it go down easily -- a pair of stars with genuine romantic chemistry -- is conspicuously missing.

The librettist, Joe DiPietro, drawing inspiration from the 1926 hit Oh, Kay!, with a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, has mocked up a fair copy of the era's giddy entertainments. Key aspects include the Long Island mansion setting, a supporting cast of wisecracking gangsters and chorines, and a plot built around an illegal stash of liquor bottles. The hero, Jimmy Winter, a soused playboy about to tie the knot for the fourth time, is a fairly Wodehousian creation; he feels like an American Bertie Wooster, staggering from one mortifying situation to another, beset by controlling women and in need of a Jeeves to bail him out. It's a good fit for Matthew Broderick, who renders Jimmy's empty-headed, fun-seeking ways with deadpan finesse. "Don't hit me -- I'm rich," he begs a sinister character outside a speakeasy. Pledging fidelity to his latest fiancée, he swears, "Roxie, Ginger, and Trixie meant nothing to me." Proposing to yet another true love, he acknowledges his tangled past when he asks her to "be my fourth, possibly my fifth, wife."

The object of that last blandishment is Billie Bendix, a tough-talking bootlegger (Kelli O'Hara, sneering and mouthing Brooklyn vowels like Jimmy Cagney). Not really a specialist in this sort of champagne-bubble entertainment, O'Hara gives it her all here, crooning "Someone to Watch Over Me" while brandishing a rifle; slinking around Jimmy's boudoir, making like a vamp ("Something wrong with your shoulder?" is the standard reaction to her allegedly sexy poses); and, for reasons that defy explanation, impersonating a cockney maid, the better to drop several scalding spoonfuls of soup in Jimmy's lap. It goes without saying that, when she applies that heavenly set of pipes to numbers like "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and the title tune, all is well at the Imperial. (Also to the creative team's credit, they haven't simply larded the score with the same five Gershwin tunes everyone knows; there are some real rarities here, and a couple of classics, like "Lady Be Good," are all but thrown away.)

But the stars, each one charming in a solo spot, make for a surprising mismatch. Broderick has effectively retooled for the role of Jimmy the milquetoast persona he used so effectively in The Producers, but, however artfully done, it's still a cartoon delivered by an actor whose specialty is standing outside of himself. O'Hara, an actress to her fingertips, plays the most featherbrained material for real. The moment it should all come together arrives near the end of Act I, when Jimmy and Billie cavort around his cavernous living room, treating the furniture like mountain goats and singing "'S Wonderful." The mood is right, the song is a delight, and, for a pair of non-dancers, they are extremely game; it's the moment for them to fall in love with each other and for us to fall in love with them. But it doesn't quite happen -- he's in one world, and she's in another; they collide but they don't connect. (This is particularly noticeable because O'Hara has enjoyed strong chemistry with leading men as different as Matthew Morrison, Harry Connick, Jr., and Paulo Szot.) Because we never really develop any rooting interest in their romance -- in the final scene, you may wonder why a hardworking gal like Billie really needs Jimmy, who remains the same feckless man-child he was in Act I, Scene I -- Nice Work If You Can Get It devolves into a series of scattered, and fitfully amusing, songs and scenes.

And yet, if it never really soars, Nice Work If You Can Get It never falls below a certain minimum level of professionalism. The supporting cast is loaded with familiar faces we're happy to see again. Michael McGrath applies his best screwball comedy technique as Cookie, a mob henchman posing as a butler. Judy Kaye provides the evening's biggest laughs as the Duchess Estonia, "the proud founder of the Society of Dry Women," who, when finally introduced to a jug of spiked lemonade, ends up literally swinging from the chandelier. Jennifer Laura Thompson channels the spirit of Madeline Kahn as Jimmy's latest fiancée, an exponent of modern dance. ("She's so brilliant that, when she steps on stage, nobody has any idea what she is doing," Jimmy says, admiringly.) Thompson also gets one of the more wittily staged numbers, "Delishious," which features the ladies of the chorus emerging from her bubble bath, and she makes a show-stopping entrance in a bridal gown that is apparently several miles long. Stanley Wayne Mathis is a dependable source of fun as a police chief who unfailingly bursts in at the most embarrassing moments. And Estelle Parsons, arriving at the eleventh hour clad in enough leopard to endanger the species, pretty much mops up as Jimmy's overbearing mother, even when reduced to delivering easy, audience-baiting lines about Washington politics. A comedy subplot, featuring Chris Sullivan as one of Billie's big-lug associates and Robyn Hurder as a gold-digging chorine who thinks he is the heir to the throne of England, proves to be one diversion too many; even in this helium atmosphere, it comes off as too silly to be funny.

Pointedly avoiding the tap steps she used to such good effect last season in Anything Goes, Marshall uses the Charleston as her touchstone, taking it apart and re-assembling in various Cubistic ways, exploiting the dancers' tightly controlled torsos, exuberantly tossed limbs, and sharply angled legs to good effect. Bill Elliott's orchestrations insert bits of Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F to amusing effect. Derek McLane's set design --one of his cleverest -- features a tiny speakeasy that folds up into a bait-and-tackle shop when the cops arrive; an underside view of the Brooklyn Bridge that recalls the drawings of Reginald Marsh; an opulent red boudoir, its walls covered with Oliver Messel stripes and fabrics covered with fleurs-de-lis; and the great hall of Jimmy's house, with its enormous curved staircase. (Alexander V. Nichols contributed a couple of projections, including the show curtain, which features the sheet music for the title tune.) Martin Pakledinaz has produced closetfuls of cloche hats, flapper dresses, and boldly striped suits, making especially good use of Easter egg pastels. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting burnishes everything with the good taste that is his hallmark. Brian Ronan's sound design is, as always with him, refreshingly natural.

The elements of a fine jazz-baby blast are all there, but, somehow, in Nice Work If You Can Get It the party never gets going. It's overlong, overstuffed, and lacking in romantic fizz. Still, there's always an audience for this kind of faux-period bauble, so judge for yourself: If you loved Marshall's work on Anything Goes, you'll probably find yourself crooning "Do It Again." If not, your song will be "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."--David Barbour