REVIEW : ‘Damn Yankees’ Makes the Lineup

The only successful Broadway show ever to turn sports into a vivacious musical was “Damn Yankees,” a storied chestnut that the Monrovia Center Theatre manages to warmly revive--if not with home runs, at least with a solid single that it stretches, on occasion, into a double.

This flavorful hot dog and peanuts confection made Gwen Verdon a star in 1955 with the hot number “Whatever Lola Wants,” and, when Warner Bros. released the movie version a few years later (with Verdon seducing long-ball hitter Tab Hunter), it even included some of the great Yankees of those years, notably Hank Bauer and Mickey Mantle.

So much for history. “Damn Yankees” is 37 years old and rarely staged anymore, but its Faustian story line and America’s love affair with Abner Doubleday are still a winning box score. (It was inspired by the novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant” by Douglass Wallop--what a name for a baseball writer.)

Most deliciously, the musical book (by its original Broadway director George Abbott and Wallop) is actually not about the Yankees, but rather the miserable and now-defunct Washington Senators.

The team’s new hero, who sells his soul for fame, is perfectly cast with arrow-straight humility by Gregory Cook, who rather echoes the Robert Redford character in “The Natural.” It’s that kind of show--with music.

That brings us to the theater’s iron woman, pianist Nancy Ramos, who sits off to the side and single-handedly bangs out the entire score by Richard Adler while the cast earnestly handles the lyrics by Jerry Ross.

As community theater goes, the singing is respectable. Unlike many big musicals in which pit orchestras often muffle the lyrics, you can hear every word here. On occasion, the vocalizing soars, as with Salvatore Di Vita, who plays the team manager, on the stirring locker room number “Heart!” (as in, “You gotta have . . .”).

Director Wayne Foster’s 22-member cast is efficient and, with a few exceptions, bumptious. As the devil character (with the ripe sobriquet of Applegate), the theater’s artistic director, Nick Charles, is delightfully serpentine and full of special effects tricks, such as fire snapping from his cuffs.

In fact, Charles triggers the show’s best laugh when he suddenly leaps into a randy imitation of his devilish assistant’s (Julie Holmes) purring number, “Whatever Lola Wants.”

The Monrovia Center Theatre, a comfortable, three-year-old, 140-seat house and former site of the Old Town Music Hall, is a busy community venue with a year-round seven-show season that spotlights revivals of standards. (Its last show was “Anything Goes” and it follows “Damn Yankees” with “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof.”) The actors come from throughout the Los Angeles area.

“Damn Yankees,” which requires a lot of its male dancers, doesn’t offer any performers who can really dance. Choreographer Lucy Nagle, however, nicely overcomes this gap by telescoping the larger demands (this was a show, after all, originally choreographed by Bob Fosse), while sufficiently catching the show’s basic dance routines.

The result is not seamless, but bulky amateur dancer Thom Maher perfectly captures the spirit of the hoofer in a Senator green and white baseball suit, and it is his sublime success with this small role that embodies the warmth of this production.

On the downside, the set designs are clunky, the stage is devoid of enlivening props and the role of the hero’s wife (the glum, somber and under-projecting Lynnel Bryson) is miscast.

As for that sinuous devil’s assistant (Holmes), it’s a crucial role that director Foster apparently opted to fill with an actress who could belt out “Lola” and had a few dance moves. But this character has to be one sexy temptress--at one point the young hero is so bedazzled with her that he bites his towel. Holmes is simply unable to carry it off.

Anyway, it’s rare for any theater to revive “Damn Yankees.” That thonk you hear is the crack of the bat at the MCT.

“Damn Yankees,” Monrovia Center Theatre, 120 E. Lemon St., Monrovia, 8:15 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:15 p.m. Sunday matinees. Ends July 12. $5-10. (818) 303-9521. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.