Director Hopes to Keep O.C. Jumpin’ Awhile

They’re back, and they’re black, and they ain’t misbehavin’. But Spike Lee’s choreographer has every intention of keeping the joint jumpin’.

“I flew from New York to do this,” said Otis Sallid, who is co-directing the revival of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” by the Orange County Black Actors Theatre.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’,” a musical tribute to legendary composer and jazz pianist Thomas (Fats) Waller, opens tonight on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and runs through July 16.

The Broadway production won a Tony as the best musical of 1978, setting a standard for black stage revues that hasn’t been matched since. (It also catapulted Nell Carter to fame.)

“Fats was hot, really hot, and so was his period in the ‘20s and ‘30s,” said Sallid, whose electrifying choreography in Lee’s latest movie, “Do the Right Thing,” defines hot for the ‘80s. “We’re going to show you what it was like back then.”

To underscore Waller’s era, Sallid said, he has staged “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” with period choreography, using such dance steps as the Shorty George, Count Your Money, Truckin’, Walkin’ the Dog and Fallin’ off the Wheelbarrow.

But if all of Waller’s music was danceable--it spanned waltzes, jitterbugs, blues and jazz--his tunes were just as entertaining for their wickedly sophisticated lyrics (sometimes written with and by others). Many of the 30 earthy songs that fill the score of the show are fabled for their double- and even triple-entendres.

For instance, the title of “This Joint Is Jumpin’ ” obviously denotes a place where everybody is having a terrific time. But it also suggests the use of potent marijuana and, on a deeper level, it has a specific sexual connotation.

“Fats says one thing and means another,” Sallid noted. “He was a great guy for metaphor. He was into rhyming and naming. When you work on his stuff, you get to see the relationship between what Fats did back then and what groups like Run DMC and Public Enemy are doing now.”

Of course there is nothing remotely like rap in “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which features such tunes as “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Squeeze Me” and “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now” as it moves between the black Tin Pan Alley of Harlem and the white downtown nightspots where Waller also entertained.

“Fats mixed both worlds,” said Adleane Hunter, who heads the black theater troupe and co-directed the show with Sallid.

In fact, Waller mixed more than that. Although all his music bears the stamp of his most influential teacher, ragtime/jazz pianist James P. Johnson, Waller also studied formal composition with Carl Bohm at the Juilliard School and classical piano technique with Leopold Godowsky.

“I consider the thorough (left-hand) bass foundation I got in the study of Bach the best part of my training,” Waller, who died in 1943 at the age of 39, once told Metronome magazine. And, he explained, “whenever you get stuck for a two-part harmonic device, you can always go back to Liszt or Chopin. (But) it’s all in knowing what to put on the right beat.”

Hunter had planned to stage “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” last summer at South Coast only to find the rights withdrawn when a national touring revival was mounted last year with the original Broadway cast. “They thought it would be coming to Los Angeles and maybe to the (Orange County Performing Arts) Center,” she recalled. “But it never did.”

Hunter staged “Eubie!” instead, which was just as well, she said, because it primed the troupe for the Waller show. “Fats’ music is much more difficult than Eubie Blake’s,” she noted. “I’m not sure we would have been up to it last season.”

Founded in 1982 as an outgrowth of an earlier group, the nonprofit Black Actors Theatre does not have its own performance space and is administered out of Hunter’s home in Santa Ana. Its annual budget of $121,000 comes chiefly from ticket sales to productions that were scattered in four theaters over slightly more than the past year, she said.

The troupe’s biggest hit until “Eubie!” was the non-musical “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” in 1987. It too was mounted at South Coast’s 161-seat Second Stage.

“We’re much closer to finding our own theater than we’ve ever been before,” said Hunter. “It’s an empty storefront in Santa Ana, which could be turned into a 100-seat house.” (See accompanying story.)

The cast of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” features Rose Mallett, Tina Jackson, Michael Larche and Henry Weaver--all back from “Eubie!”--along with newcomers George Bouldin and Delilah Williams. They will be accompanied by a three-piece band, with music conductor Richard Abraham on stride piano “playing to the max,” said Sallid.

Because of the expense of staging the show--about $41,000--Hunter said it can’t break even unless it sells out. “This is a labor of love,” she said. “The cast isn’t even getting paid. It’s worth it just to work.”

If it’s any consolation, the original members of the Broadway cast started out with “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” at an Off Broadway theater that could afford to pay each of them only $25 for eight weeks of workshop performances.

For the Harlem-born Sallid, “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” represents a return to the stage after working extensively in television (for Debbie Allen on “Fame”), in videos (he did Don Johnson’s latest) and in movies (he choreographed Spike Lee’s “School Daze” musical as well as “Do the Right Thing”).

The show is also a directorial warm-up. In September, Sallid will begins rehearsals of “Tales of Manhattan,” a musical he will direct by the rock ‘n’ roll songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (They penned Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock” and the Coasters’ “Searchin’,” “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown”).

“We’re aiming for an opening on Broadway early next year,” Sallid said. “I couldn’t think up a better way to get my stuff together than working on Fats.”

“Ain’t Misbehavin”’ runs through July 16 on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Curtain times: 3 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 3 and 8 p.m. Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Tuesday to Friday. Tickets: $18 to $22. Information: (714) 957-4033. The production will move to the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, after it closes in Costa Mesa, from July 22 to Aug. 5.