The Show Does Go On, With Style : Theater: Musical plays to a full house at the Pasadena Playhouse, which endured temblor with an outer wall shaken but otherwise intact.

Every musical has a show stopper, something that brings down the house.

But it’s not supposed to be literal. Not 12 hours before curtain time. Not because of an earthquake.

In fact, the Pasadena Playhouse, in the heart of the city that took it on the chin in Friday’s 6.0 earthquake, came through like a trouper, virtually unscathed.

Decorative bricks were shaken loose from a 50-by-25-foot outer wall. It was rather like the breaking of a fake bottle on stage, melodramatic but fairly minor. The interior walls were intact; recent restoration had reinforced most walls to earthquake safety standards, said architect Richard McCann.

The show, Cole Porter’s jazzy “You Never Know,” went on Friday night before a full house and that made the real show stopper possible--the third-act number “At Long Last Love,” when Harry Groener, as Baron Rommer, sings, “Is it an earthquake/Or merely a shock?”

It took the audience an instance to absorb the words--and then a wave of titters and applause rippled up the rows. It was followed a moment later by another round of laughter as Groener stepped upstage and delivered a hapless “I don’t write this stuff” gesture.

That line had popped into director Paul Lazarus’ sleepy head at 7:43 a.m. Friday. Anticipating a reaction from the post-quake crowd, he built a “hold” into Friday’s performance of the musical, set in 1929, a year that had a big crash of its own.

It was even better than the standard favorite, “Is it the Real Turtle Soup or Merely the Mock?”

These fans had faith. Even the barb that one theater lover tossed at a Playhouse official, “Do you guarantee we’re safe?” was just affectionate twitting. The beloved old theater has survived bankruptcy, flood, fire and prime-time television. A shaker wasn’t going to keep it down.

“I thought they’d put on a show in the courtyard if they had to,” said Jeannie Degenkolp loyally.

Twenty years ago, theater lover Susanna Erdos was sitting in the Huntington Hartford for “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” At the lyric, “I get shaky,” an aftershock to the Sylmar quake rattled through the rows.

Everybody giggled then. “If it happens again,” Erdos said Friday night, “I’m ready.”

In the first reports of damage, said Lazarus, “they were saying the most outrageous things” on radio and TV. “People started wiring in donations. Other theaters called, did we need space?”

Thanks, but no. Theater staff and city inspectors found everything shipshape in the 1926-era edifice.

However, by curtain time, there were flyers in the lobby asking for contributions to the earthquake damage fund.

The Playhouse is the state’s official theater, ranking right up there with the state fish (California Golden Trout) and reptile (California Desert Tortoise). It has survived its own brushes with extinction.

The risk to the Mission Revival-style landmark which has outlasted natural and financial disasters brought patrons, employees and actors out on Friday morning to check on it.

But there were only bits of fallen plaster to sweep up and stage lights to be refocused. Out on the set, “There were glasses on the bar,” said Megan Mullally who plays Maria, “but they were all glued down. Nothing broke.”

Out in the courtyard before Friday’s show began, the bar offered a $2.50 quake special on wine, advertising it with yellow plastic police tape glued to the sign. The gathering looked more like a movie premiere than a disaster averted, with theatergoers encircled by TV cameras and reporters.

The show closes on Sunday. Not before, said one staffer confidently.