BWW Reviews: NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT Tour is a 'Nice Show if You Can Catch It' at Hershey

It's always a shame when worse shows run in an area for a week, and better shows hit and run before people can get there. NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT is a two-day hit-and run at Hershey Theatre, and it can only be said, "nice show if you can catch it." A full week's run would have been far better. For crying out loud, don't deprive an area of the Gershwins!

NICE WORK is a collection of George and Ira Gershwin's hits with a new book by Joe DiPietro stringing them together, loosely based on some PG Woodhouse and Guy Bolton story lines of America during Prohibition. You won't notice much in the way of Woodhouse - lead character Jimmy Winter (a charming and enthusiastic Alex Enterline) is smarter and far more apt with women than is Bertie Wooster, and bootlegger-turned-pseudo-butler Cookie (Reed Campbell) is no Jeeves. But the Gershwin music, right down to "Rhapsody in Blue" as incidental music, will keep you in your seats. If you know the songs, just avoid singing along; if you don't know them, it's time you learned the words to "S'Wonderful", "But Not For Me," and "Someone to Watch Over Me." There's blood in the sand among musical theatre lovers as to whether the Gershwins or Cole Porter are superior, and only a match-up of NICE WORK and CRAZY FOR YOU may help you decide if you aren't settled on the matter.

Jimmy's self-adoring artiste of a fiancée, Eileen Evergreen (Rachel Scarr) is too busy worshiping herself to marry Jimmy, which is just as well for him when he runs into a smart, tough bootlegger named Billie Bendix (Mariah MacFarlane). Jimmy's the marrying sort, despite the bevy of chorus girls that runs with him, but will Eileen's determination to settle him down outweigh Billie's street smarts and charm?

Eileen, a professional dancer, is the product of Senator (and judge, and minister) Max Evergreen (Benjamin Perez), a strict moralist, and his widowed sister who married into the English aristocracy, now-Duchess Estonia Dulworth (Stephanie Harter Gilmore), leader of the Society of Dry Women. They're as tough as Jimmy swears his mother is, and as determined to marry Jimmy to Eileen as the almost unseen Millicent Winter (Barbara Weetman) is to keep him from making a fourth - or is it fifth? - bad marriage. With rum runners and police running around Jimmy's Long Island beach house when he's supposed to be marrying, and an ex who's holding up on signing the annulment papers while a senator is breathing down his neck to marry again, what's a rich playboy to do?

Fortunately for the upshot of the show, a boy's best friend is his mother. The conclusion of the show, in true 1920's fashion, is a frothy, implausible, and impossible wildly happy ending despite all obstacles, in which true love hits every major member of the cast and even the ensemble, and in which the bootleggers get away with the booze, and even a bit more.

There's some fine singing in the cast, especially among Enterline, Gilmore, and MacFarlane. If anything's really at fault on stage, it's that the dancing, nicely choreographed as it is, feels far too slow until the ending, at which time it's fast enough to make you realize that what you saw earlier really was in slow motion. If anything's really at fault in the book, it's that the show is even more contrived than a 1920's feel-good revue. It's a very funny show, yet some of the humor is a bit too contrived, a bit too forced. The pace, also, ranges from frenetic to... well, the dance tempo. Nonetheless, it's enjoyable, it's cheerful, and it's even "delishious." All told, it's a modern contrivance that Gertie Lawrence would have been pleased to play in (she certainly sang a few of the songs in their original shows).

It's not a perfect show, but it's a wildly fun show, and certainly has not one bad song in the lot. Do, do, do see it if possible; it's indeed a nice show if you can catch it. At Hershey Theatre through the 17th. Hershey Theatre's schedule is at hersheytheatre.com; the tour schedule for other performances of this production is at www.niceworkontour.com.

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