With a head-spinning election season just behind us and the worst effects of a baleful economic climate yet to come, it helps to remind ourselves of a time when America was just gosh-darn great.
Our factories were producing stuff, our infrastructure had yet to decay, our civil liberties had not been unofficially nullified by signing statements and - well, even for many Americans who could only look at this "good life" through plate glass from the inclement outdoors, we did have one saving grace: a compelling villain.
Americans looked and felt so much better when we had the Soviets to kick around. If those times weren't all good, by gum, they sure felt that way.
Musical Theatre West takes us back to that time by opening its 56 th season with a "world premiere" of "Silk Stockings." If the name sounds similar to a popular musical by Cole Porter and a classic song-and-dance film starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, that's because it's one and the same.
The Long Beach company is using a tweaked update by Stuart Ross, who adds a cosmetic touch-up to a sturdy foundation of the Cole Porter score and a pair of silver-screen classics - the aforementioned 1957 Astaire and Charisse vehicle and the prosaic "Ninotchka" of 1939.
Ross' update cautiously mounts the stage and looks around nervously before feeling comfortable enough to perform. A top-shelf musical organization, with the experience and resources to command a stage as large as the 1,000-plus-seat
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Carpenter Performing Arts Center, can unapologetically swagger, then go right into a flamboyant dance and belt out a tune.
Musical Theatre West needs a stronger introduction than its opening night performance, but the pluses compensated for the minuses and still sent the audience home happy.
First, the minuses.
All eyes are on Julie Ann Emery, the linchpin of the enterprise. She stars as Nina Yaschenko, aka Ninotchka, the officious Russian agent dispatched by the Soviet government to make sure her charges do not succumb to Western decadence in Paris.
An authentic, convincing Slavic language such as Russian is considerably difficult for many Westerners, and it was taxing for Emery. She was in the right direction for certain stressed phrases, but for longer conversational lines her accent sounded more French with an English twist.
During the musical numbers, she had a sweet, timid voice that belied her reputation as a bureaucrat colder than a Siberian axe handle left outdoors.
The other vocals of some notoriety are from Emery's co-star, John Scherer. As the American director Steve Canfield filming a movie and embarking on a mission similar to Ninotchka's - making sure his cast members stay focused to the task at hand while not being seduced by the siren song of Paris - Scherer comes off as more of a game show host than an auteur. Scherer finds the right tone for the right time during Canfield's musical numbers, particularly in the duets with Ninotchka: "Paris Loves Lovers," "All of You," "On Through the Seasons We Sail," and of course, the title ballad.
The dance numbers by the 12-member ensemble were coordinated but tense. There was a slight stiffness to the steps and arm movements, and the music did not adequately muffle the stomping noises coming from the stage.
The pinnacle of the "Silk Stockings" cast, though, is Darcie Roberts. She amazes on all levels.
Roberts is the American starlet Janice Dayton, who is confident, stylish and sultry in prose, song and dance. The temperature in the Carpenter Center rises when she shows her cunning sexuality in the more ribald ditties of "Satin and Silk" and "Josephine," as the minxish wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Buttressing the provocative Dayton role is a chorus of supporting actors who are much better known outside the musical theater realm - at least among television geeks. Comrades Bibinski and Brankov are portrayed, respectively, by Stuart Pankin and Paul Kreppel, whose names might not be household but who are recognizable for their prolific appearances in sitcoms.
Joining them in their antics is Comrade Ivanov (Nick DeGruccio). All three are torn by devotion to the Soviet Union but relishing the delights of Parisian decadence, while peppering their journey with such numbers as the Russian ode "Hail Bibinski" and "Siberia," featuring a late addition by Ross: a comic wink back at GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin
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Ross showed restraint with his treatment of "Silk Stockings." There were touches such as the Palin riff and a slight reorder of the original score, but the work still lets most of the original story and score shine through.
The Musical Theatre West version, though, sets the period ahead to the 1960 s. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kruschchev regime are the backdrops.
Other than that, "Silk Stockings" is unmistakable for its faith to Cole Porter's wit and still very much a product of its times: a mash note for 20 th-century America that is uncomplicated about the message it conveys. Americans are not avaricious, but fun-loving and free-spirited. Those Soviets are joyless and doctrinaire, but they have a soft spot and yearn for the earthly delights we Yanks take for granted. Only when the Russkies can peek beyond the iron curtain, a man such as composer Peter Boroff (Andy Taylor) can show his talents and Ninotchka can thaw her heart and show affections to a running-dog Westerner.
In some ways, Musical Theatre West's "Silk Stockings" serves as an apt metaphor for America, and its timing is apropos. There are some obvious flaws, and we, like the characters, pursue our own enjoyments in the face of a larger crisis. And once again, we are held together by a collective battle with a common enemy.
Maybe the answer to where we are supposed to go now is hidden between the opening overture and the closing reprises of "Stereophonic Sound" and "On Through the Seasons We Sail."