STAGE REVIEW : ‘Suds’ Foam Puts ‘60s Songs in Spin Cycle

To Noel Coward’s “Strange, how potent cheap music is,” we might add a codicil: “. . . when it’s from your era.”

Take “Suds,” the new pop-music revue at the Old Globe Theatre. It celebrates the very early ‘60s, the glory years of American Bandstand.

Remember “Johnny Angel” and “Chapel of Love” and “Doing the Loco-Motion”? Anyone who gets swept back to high school on the very mention of the titles won’t want to miss this show, which offers these songs and 49 others , with a story line thrown in.

But those who don’t have a personal investment in this material may find that two hours of it is more than enough, even with a bubble-machine finale.

The format is fun. Cindy (Christine Sevec) works in a banana-yellow self-service laundry (Alan K. Okazaki’s set is also fun), where she listens in depth to Top-40 radio and dreams of her boyfriend in faraway New Jersey.

Her pen pal, actually. When he writes her a Dear Cindy letter, she is so crushed that she tries to spin-cycle herself to death. This brings on Dee-Dee (Susan Mosher) and Marge (Melinda Gilb), her teen angels--real angels. Perhaps the reader can take it from there.

The writers (Gilb, Steve Gunderson and Bryan Scott) have some trouble doing so, particularly when it’s time to send Dee-Dee and Marge off to other assignments at the close of Act II. “Suds” could take a hint from Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” on how to wind up a summer-weight frolic on a rueful note--a hint that the times are a-changing.

Or maybe the show should discard all notions of a book and just do the numbers. As staged by Will Roberson, it does them with absolutely the right attitude, making no great claims for them as music, even pop music, but respecting the feelings that they evoke in Cindy and her pals.

Sevec’s Cindy reminds us that young love is serious : It’s her party, darn it, and she’ll cry if she wants to. Or even kill herself. (To “The Loco-Motion,” which has got a good beat.)

Mosher’s Dee-Dee is Annette, heavy on hair spray and optimism. Dee-Dee’s usual venue is “where the boys are.” She can’t imagine where they are tonight.

Gilb’s Marge, in killer Capris (Gregg Barnes’ costumes are dead-on), is Ann-Margret in “Kitten With a Whip.” Older than her years, if you know what I mean. Her boots are meant for walking.

Alone, each performer can wring a song to its withers. But they’re at their best together, throwing themselves on the pyre of love with the synchronous devotion of the Supremes.

(We appreciate the inner joke here--that a white group can’t really sound like the Supremes. Fine, but it’s a shame not to have any black performers in the show. The early ‘60s were precisely the time when the black sound crossed over into the pop mainstream, a point made by “Dreamgirls.”)

The men in our girls’ lives, real and imagined, are all played by Steve Gunderson. From all the torture of the songs, we keep expecting a heavy-lidded Elvis to walk in.

Instead, and this is another good joke, Gunderson provides a series of cheerful twerps--the kind of “mystery date” who does not get a girl into the deep waters she was expecting from Top-40 ballads. In any guise (including a chenille bathrobe) he’s a stitch.

The design package is terrific, full of amusing asides at the free-form furniture and candy colors of the late ‘50s, which is the show’s true psychological period. Musical director William Doyle also does a super job emulating the big sound of yesterday’s records with a tiny ensemble. Synthesizers usually put a cold chill on a show, but here the sound is just tinny enough to add to the fun. (Gunderson, clearly a man of parts, did the arrangements.)

“Suds” outstays its welcome for those who didn’t pay any particular attention to these songs when they were new, and don’t see any particular reason to do so now; but for the right age group, it’s solid gold nostalgia.

Plays through May 8. Performances Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2. Tickets $14-$24. Simon Edison Performing Arts center, Balboa Park; (619) 239-2255. ‘SUDS’

A “rocking musical ‘60s soap opera,” at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. Book by Melinda Gilb, Steve Gunderson and Bryan Scott. Musical and vocal arrangements Steve Gunderson. Director Will Roberson. Choreographer Javier Velasco. Scenic designer Alan K. Okazaki. Costumes Gregg Barnes. Lighting Daniel J. Corson. Sound Adam Wartnik. Stage manager Diana F. DiVita. Assistant stage manager Robert Drake. With Christine Sevec, Melinda Gilb, Susan Mosher and Steve Gunderson.