THEATER REVIEW ‘ANYTHING GOES’ : Cast Off : The showcase of classic Cole Porter songs is still seaworthy after 57 years.

Ahoy there! The cast and crew of the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera launched their revival of “Anything Goes” last week and though I had one or two reservations, this 57-year-old floating operetta proves eminently seaworthy.

Buoyed by an abundance of amiable hokum and set aboard a transatlantic luxury liner, the show features classic songs by Cole Porter and a recommissioned 1987 book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman. (The 1934 original by P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse foundered badly on a reef of no-longer-topical jokes and references.)

Musical comedy purists will be glad to know that the refurbishing hasn’t diluted the original’s briny froth. In a plot as thin as a foresail, Billy (Stuart Larson), a young stockbroker, stows away on the S. S. American to win the hand of true love Hope (Shannon Barr), unfortunately betrothed to a veddy upper crust Englishman (David Morris). Hope really loves Billy, but she can’t admit it and, in his exasperating odyssey of pursuit, Billy winds up in no end of comical scrapes as he dodges the ship’s authorities. Along the way, Billy gets help from saloon chanteuse Reno Sweeney (Toni Kaye) and finds an unlikely ally in a gangster (Randy Doney) on the lam.

As in the original, these convolutions are an excuse for the music and lyrics of Cole Porter, who helped shape the American musical for two generations. Although the story pivots on Billy’s romantic quest, its real anchor is the jaded but big-hearted Reno, the role that brought stardom to Ethel Merman.

As Reno in this production, Toni Kaye delivers suitably bigger-than-life renditions of classic numbers that run the emotional gamut, including the wistfully confessional “I Get a Kick Out of You,” the affectionate “You’re the Top” and the brassy celebration of sensual redemption in “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” And Kaye’s high-energy singing and dancing in the all-out production number “Anything Goes” is a showstopper--we need the intermission that follows.

Stuart Larson’s Billy hits an impressive level of sincerity and appeal in his performance, and demonstrates a superb singing voice. It gives the ever-distant Hope something to do and shows Barr’s obvious talents as a singer. What eludes her is credibility in the flimsily sketched character of Hope, who is defined only by her waffling over her feelings for Billy.

Among the supporting cast, Sandy Everett is hysterical as Erma, the good-time gangster’s moll, and Doney has a vaudevillian field day with the plum role of Moonface Martin, Public Enemy No. 13 (and still dropping). But David Morris shows little facility for comic timing as Hope’s fiance, and Mel Gordon is just plain obnoxious as Billy’s perpetually drunk employer. Throw that one overboard!

Visually, the show offers constant motion amid Mark Morton’s enormous art deco set, which alternates between the open deck and various interior locations. Director-choreographer Ernest O. Flatt has staged “Anything Goes” with a determination to keep the show upbeat and entertaining, and he has succeeded.

The chief disappointment is that in aiming for pure entertainment, the production steers clear of the more complex waters charted in Porter’s songs. Beneath the toe-tapping urgency of those quirky rhythms lies some wryly subversive commentary, from satirical swipes at society to a barely veiled ambivalence toward romance.

There is something obsessive, even a little destructive, in Billy’s “Easy to Love” ode to the forbidden Hope--and it blinds him to Reno’s advances, even though from where we sit, she’s probably a better catch.

“Anything Goes” delights in comically upending moral cliches. But Porter brought a worldly sophistication to his lyrics that begs for sharper focus than simply playing for laughs affords us. He was also a voice for tolerance amid the narrow-mindedness that goes hand-in-hand with economic hard times. In that respect, Porter’s Depression-era caution speaks to us with unsettling relevance.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Anything Goes” runs through Dec. 22 at the Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido St., Santa Barbara, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., and matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $24.50 to $26 (adults) and $9.75 (children). Call 963-0761 for reservations or information.