Theatre in Review: She Loves Me (Roundabout Theatre Company/Studio 54)

	Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi. Photo: Joan Marcus

Actors with a gift for high-style sophisticated comedy are worth their weight in gold and, in its revival of She Loves Me, Roundabout has struck the mother lode with Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi. Cast as squabbling store clerks who don't realize that at night they share a passionate, if anonymous, correspondence, they play with a sparkle and wit that would warm the heart of Ernst Lubitsch himself. (She Loves Me is based on a play by the Hungarian playwright Miklós László, but it was immortalized by Lubitsch in the film The Shop Around the Corner; Nora Ephron updated it in You've Got Mail.)

As Amalia, a quiet young lady with a big heart, Benanti wins us over from the minute she enters David Rockwell's stunningly designed shop for ladies -- we are in Budapest, 1934 -- desperate to win a job. Determined to demonstrate her sales skills, she turn on the charm, slyly convincing a skeptical, and rather stout, customer that a musical cigarette box is really an ideal place for stashing one's candy: Each time she absentmindedly opens it while reading or listening to the radio, that tinkling little tune will warn her to think twice before consuming yet another bonbon. By the time she is done making her case, Benanti has one convinced that this little item is the only thing preventing an epidemic of morbid obesity. Needless to say, she closes the deal, with her customer and with us.

For all her charm and proficiency on the job, Amalia is a rather shy, serious woman, lost in dreams of romance with a man she has never met. When she applies her crystalline soprano voice to the bemused ballad, "Will He Like Me?," the only rational response is to wonder who wouldn't be captivated by this charming, unaffected creature. She also makes a lovely thing out of "Vanilla Ice Cream," in which Amalia, panic rising in her, begins to wonder if the colleague she has detested for so long might not be the man of her dreams. In many of her recent gigs - The Radio City Spring Spectacular, the TV series The Good Wife and Supergirl -- and in her own self-made videos. Benanti has displayed a facility for bizarre characters and sharp, snarky humor. Here, she marvels as an unassuming lover of books and music whose life is comically turned upside down when the man she hates is also the man she loves.

Levi, who impressed a couple of seasons back in the otherwise dreadful First Date, at last has a role commensurate with his talents as Georg, the very proper clerk who constantly upbraids Amalia for faults both real and imagined, yet who underneath yearns for a romantic partner of his own. There's a little bit of a madman inside him waiting to get out, as seen in "Tonight at Eight," which frantically catalogs his fearful anticipation of his first meeting with the correspondent known only as "Dear Friend." And he is pure delight in the title tune; having discovered that Amalia is really the love of his life, he skitters about the stage with the baby-giraffe awkwardness of an ordinary guy who can't possibly contain his happiness. (The choreographer, Warren Carlyle, has deftly staged it as a non-dancer's dance of joy, perfectly timing Georg's goofily eccentric moves to the off-center angles of Jerry Bock's surprisingly jazzy melody.)

Mostly everything goes right in Scott Ellis' production, which makes a very strong case for a show that, despite being beloved of show fans, has perpetually fallen short of hit status. (It is leagues ahead of Ellis' 1992 staging, also for Roundabout, which lacked a consistent sense of style.) The authors -- in addition to Bock, book by Joe Masteroff and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick -- have conjured up a chamber operetta full of quiet charms, not least its evocation of a between-the-wars Europe where young lovers might discuss their favorite passages of Tolstoy or kindle their romance over a glass of wine and gypsy violins. This is a minority opinion, I know, but I still find the first act a little calculated in its charms and a tad precious in its sensibility; however, the second act -- in the right hands -- pays off delightfully and throughout it remains a blessedly civilized entertainment.

And, aside from Gavin Creel, miscast as Kodaly, the shop's in-house roué (at 40, Creel looks like a boy playing dress up, a sheep in wolf's clothing), Ellis has assembled a nearly ideal company. Byron Jennings has the right old-world manner as the shop's owner, especially when fondly recalling his exuberant youth in "Days Gone By," an exercise in nostalgia set to waltz time, and, later, when lowering the boom on Georg, whom he suspects of cuckolding him. Michael McGrath wisecracks with his usual élan as another clerk, offering color commentary on Amalia and Georg's sparring. Jane Krakowski steadily amuses as the most man-hungry member of the shop's staff; a highlight is "A Trip to the Library," in which she discovers that a girl needn't be literate to land a friend among the bookshelves. As the shop's delivery boy, who dreams of moving up, Nicholas Barasch just about stops the show in "Try Me," in which he pleads to be promoted to the sales staff. Peter Bartlett is on hand as a fussy headwaiter trying to maintain order in a café riddled with indiscreet pairings.

Given material that charms rather than electrifies, Ellis and Carlyle generally respect its contours, trusting that we'll fall in love with these people and their modest dreams. One misstep is the staging of "A Romantic Atmosphere," which is so larded with vulgar gags that it turns the café where Amalia and Georg have agreed to meet into the kind of place they would avoid like the plague. On the plus side, Carlyle wittily handles the penultimate number, "Twelve Days to Christmas," in which a series of increasingly frantic holiday shoppers strip the store bare of its inventory.

Ellis has also seen to it that the production is a candy box of visual delights. Rockwell renders the shop as a complete building (set on a forced-perspective streetscape) that opens up, revealing a gorgeous Art Nouveau interior in yellow with lavender and green highlights, filled with illuminated glass display cases and dozens and dozens of bottles in an array of colors. Other locations include the gift-wrapping room in the back of the shop, a hospital room, Amalia's bedroom, and the aforementioned café, depicted as a series of plush banquettes in a deep, amorous red. Donald Holder's lighting provides bright, sunlit looks, crepuscular skies, and dim, seductive interiors. The costume designer, Jeff Mahshie, shows a fine grasp of period style and detail, allowing Amalia to become more attractive by degrees until the final lovers' clinch. Sound design is always a challenge in Studio 54 -- there is no pit, so the musicians are split up and placed in the stage right and left boxes -- but Jon Weston makes sure that every word is intelligible.

It's possible that She Loves Me looks better than it once did in part because elements like honest, character-based comedy, literate lyrics, and elegant melodies are in such short supply these days. Whatever the case, She Loves Me is good fun for grownups, a sip of surprisingly dry champagne. You may find it habit-forming. -- David Barbour