Theatre in Review: Smokey Joe's Cafe (Stage 42)

	John Edwards, Jelani Remy, Dwayne Cooper, Kyle Taylor Park. Photo: Julia Russell.

There's a kind of unspoken battle of the sexes unfolding at Stage 42 these nights, and the game is handicapped in favor of the guys. The songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose extensive pop catalogue provides Smokey Joe's Cafe with its reason for being, caught the rock-and-roll bug just as it was emerging from the same fertile Southern musical swampland that had produced the genre known as rhythm and blues. In addition to a certain fellow you may have heard of, named Elvis, they had great success with doo-wop groups like The Coasters. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the liveliest parts of this songbook revue are structured around the quartet consisting of Dwayne Cooper, John Edwards, Kyle Taylor Parker, and Jelani Remy. Whenever they take a running leap into a Coasters classic, like "Along Came Jones," "Yakety Yak," or "Charlie Brown," the show suddenly assumes a sharper, wittier profile. This is in no small part because Joshua Bergasse, the director and choreographer, has at his command plenty of cleverly synchronized, high-stepping moves that contribute to the party atmosphere. All four performers look like they're having a ball, and suddenly a revival of this 1994 Broadway tribute show doesn't seem quite so implausible.

In the numbers listed above, and several others, the four men are backed by the rest of the company, none of whom manage to register in quite the same way. The only other male on board, Max Sangerman, brings his best Presley moves to several numbers, but the award for Most Active Pelvis Onstage is an easy win for Remy, whose version of "Jailhouse Rock" is powerful enough to crumble the walls of Alcatraz. There are four talented ladies on board, too, but the show never gives them anything like equal opportunities. Emma Degerstedt, last seen swanning around the Wild West in a nun's habit in Desperate Measures, applies something like a magnitude 7 tremor to her fringed flapper dress in a little item called "Teach Me How to Shimmy," but she has little else of interest to do. Dionne D. Figgins works some sinuous, sensuous dance steps in "Spanish Harlem," but she, too, is otherwise bereft of challenging assignments. Perhaps as a reward for her all-night-long good behavior, Nicole Vanessa Ortiz is at least rewarded with a sizzling rendition of "Fools Fall in Love," which functions as a de facto eleven o'clock number; before that, she is largely left to smolder in the background.

And then there's Alysha Umphress, arguably the best-known member of the cast, thanks to her delightful turn in the recent revival of On the Town (also choreographed by Bergasse). She isn't really in her element here: In a production that calls for nonstop belting and shouting, her best skills -- a sly, deadpan sense of humor, an easy warmth, and a sensitive way with a lyric -- are notably underused. Still, her thoughtful reading of "Pearl's a Singer"-- a character sketch in song about a third-rate performer whose life has passed her by -- is one of the evening's highlights, providing a rare moment of real feeling amid the general hyperactivity.

And surely "Pearl's a Singer" beguiles because it is the closest thing to a musical-theatre song on offer. With the emphasis so much on the quartet and numbers like those mentioned above, plus "Little Egypt" and (the admittedly fiendishly catchy) "Love Potion #9," Smokey Joe's Café comes perilously close to being an evening constructed entirely out of novelty tunes. It's a high-volume, high-pressure entertainment -- barreling through forty songs in ninety minutes, often failing to stop for even a bit of applause -- riding a wave of energy so insistent that it can leave one enervated.

In an evening that is never less than slickly professional, Beowulf Boritt's brick-walls-and-bentwood-chairs bar setting is lit with just the right amount of pizzazz -- chases, pulses, saturated colors -- by Jeff Croiter. In the most striking visual effect, for "On Broadway," the set becomes a skeletal version of itself, outlined in LED tape. Alejo Vietti's costumes are colorful and generally flattering. Peter Fitzgerald's sound design is as hard-hitting as anyone could want, yet -- aided by a cast with excellent diction -- the lyrics are thoroughly intelligible. The band, including the bass player Yuka Tadano and the dueling keyboards of Matt Oestreicher and Doug Derryberry, serves up consistently tasty musical selections.

Could a more varied evening be assembled out of the songs of Leiber and Stoller? Comparing the song list for this production with the one featured in the Broadway program posted in Playbill Vault, one sees that the show has morphed over time. (I suppose it would have been too much to ask for the inclusion of "Is That All There Is?", the campy expression of nihilism -- it sounds like something Kurt Weill might have written after a three-day bender -- that Peggy Lee made into an unlikely hit.) And, in any case, summer is upon us and there may be an audience for this sort of shiny, empty bauble. Personally, I felt like Peggy Lee, if you know what I mean. -- David Barbour