DAMES AT SEA is a tap-happy celebration of the golden era of movie musicals with a heart as big as the ocean! Directed and choreographed by the three-time Tony Award-nominated choreographer Randy Skinner (42nd Street, Irving Berlin's White Christmas), this gem of a show has been reimagined for the bright lights of Broadway and taken to glamorous and spectacular new heights! Featuring rollicking tap dancing, love at first sight, joyful music and a boatload of laughs, this glittering musical extravaganza has everything you need for an unforgettable night at the theatre.
Whether there's an audience for this effusive salute to a kitschy, corny genre that most Broadway theatergoers have either forgotten or never knew remains an open question...The musical is right in the wheelhouse of director-choreographer Randy Skinner, who never met a nostalgic dance interlude he didn't like...The central role of the cute ingenue might have benefited from a more captivating presence -- the fresh-faced Kropp is no Peters, her dance ability outweighing her tentative acting -- and Tedder and Gardner are perhaps too interchangeable. But Skinner has assembled a likeable cast that fits the material, both in terms of the stock types they're playing and the kind of screen stars associated with them...The show's over-the-top scene-stealer...is Margherita...Her Mona is classic Brooklyn trash reinvented as a grand thespian, turning on a dime from high melodrama to an ingratiating megawatt smile.
The revival of Dames At Sea that opened on Broadway Thursday night is a lot of fun and a tribute to the city's inexhaustible pool of inexhaustible talent, if not actual stars. In the District's smallest house, recently acquired by the Second Stage nonprofit company but not yet rehabbed, the fit is just right for Anna Louizos' humorous sets and the company of six, which includes a dazzling tapper named Eloise Kropp as Ruby, the ingenue. She's nicely partnered by Cary Tedder as the sailor who falls for Ruby. Randy Skinner is the director and choreographer, and by the end of the show you'll be praying that these hoofers have shock absorbers for joints, because the pounding is relentless (and for a tapdance lover like me, exhilarating)
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