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[Theater reviews]

Boogie-woogie
Swing! dances down memory lane

BY IRIS FANGER

SWING!
Original concept by Paul Kelly. Production supervised by Jerry Zaks. Directed and choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett. Set Design by Thomas Lynch. Costumes by William Ivey Long. Lighting by Kenneth Posner. At the Shubert Theatre through June 10.

It’s a World War II kind of springtime, with Pearl Harbor showing on the movie screens and the television line-up featuring black-and-white newsreel coverage of the same. So Swing!, a musical revue based on the hit tunes and jive rhythms of the era, fits right in. The format is a familiar one — a nod to the memories, sans story, characters, or dialogue, that comes across as an American version of Riverdance with stepdancing replaced by ethnic moves as native as the Fourth of July. Fortunately, the music of the period can carry the concept, and the show is enlivened by a troupe of appealing singers and dancers who are backed by a splendid on-stage “big” band of eight players.

Swing! opened on Broadway last season, following in the endearing footsteps of such earlier dance-based shows as Bob Fosse’s Dancin’‚ Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, and Fosse. Of course, those were keyed to the unique talents of their subjects: Fosse and his sexually explicit humor-laced movements, Robbins with his expressive manner of telling a story through gesture and dance. We’re not talking that brand of genius here.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett re-creates the outlines of the kids who took to the dance floor in the flying acrobatics of the jitterbug and the couples who competed at the annual Harvest Moon ballroom contests, adding virtuoso tap performers plus segues into C&W and Latino heat. A quartet of singers and the dancing ensemble step in syncopated time to the fast-paced upbeat of the Gotham City Gates, whose smoky or hot renditions of classics that made our grandparents tap their feet provide the throughline. The likes of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Blues in the Night” bring back Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, and Hoagy Carmichael, among others etched into the American pop songbook. Only a curmudgeon would suggest that anything more than these sounds is necessary to seduce an audience into audible sighs of pleasure.

Taylor-Corbett has pinpointed signature locations for particular segments: the USO, Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Otherwise, the shallow, horizontal space in front of the movable bandstand is generic. Some of her notions are predictable — for example, the uptight performer who opens his shirt to let us know he’s found the beat. One might have wished for a little bite in the actions of the servicemen on the dance floor, something as evocative as contemporary choreographer Paul Taylor’s subversive ghosts of battle in Company B, which he created to much of the same music.

Taylor-Corbett’s choreography is studded with movements like snake hips, strutting, over-the-head windmill lifts, men throwing the girls down in slides across the floor, shoulders that shimmy. Most of this is smoothed out and repeated from one piece of music to the next. The variations come when one or another of the couples is let loose on the dance floor: Jermaine R. Rembert teaming up with Desiree Duarte, or Gary and Lisa McIntye, prize-winning country-dance-contest competitors, performing a polished twirling two-step in the sequence set to “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” The dances alternate with stand-up songs presented by Ann Crumb, the torchy nightclub stylist; Sarah Jane Nelson, an appealing soprano with a sense of humor; Alan H. Green, who specializes in bebop singing; and MC Charlie Marcus, who also plays trumpet and tap-dances, notably in competition with Jeb Bounds. The best-staged of the songs, “Bli-Blip,” is performed by Crumb and Green, who argue in scat lyrics through a five o’clock date after he’s kept her waiting. In keeping with what’s counseled in Gypsy, the requisite gimmick is brought out at the end — but don’t look for this reviewer to ruin the surprise.

The production has been dressed by William Ivey Long in costumes that inject the entertainment with a modicum of wit, particularly in the 1930s Chicago-gangster-style hats donned by the band members and an ensemble of zoot suits and in the flouncy little dresses for the women that carry excess to adorable heights. The icon that signals the age, along with the unforgettable music, is the footwear — neatly tied shoes, topped by bobby sox.

The performance reviewed here took place after the Phoenix’s Arts section had gone to press.

Issue Date: May 31- June 7, 2001