STAGE REVIEW : ‘Smoke on the Mountain’ Relentlessly Pleasant

Lamb’s Players Theatre’s West Coast premiere of “Smoke on the Mountain” is a singularly unchallenging finish to what has been Lamb’s least provocative season in recent history.

The musical tells the story of a gospel singing family’s concert in the sanctuary of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in North Carolina in June, 1938.

The name, Mount Pleasant, says it all.

Everything is relentlessly pleasant in “Smoke on the Mountain,” from the humor to the characterizations. Nothing much happens besides hymn-singing. Under the direction of Lamb’s associate director Kerry Meads, the show gives one the feeling of being in church.

Sure, Mom and Dad Sanders, the three kids and Uncle Stanley have their little squabbles--one daughter has dreams of straying from the straight and narrow and Uncle Stanley clearly has a temper that has landed him in trouble in the past.

But there’s no true edge here. All corners are ultimately rounded and everyone is unified and uplifted by their Christian faith.

And that, it should be noted, seemed to suit much of Lamb’s opening-night audience just fine. They just clapped hands and joined right in with the songs that they knew.

Connie Ray, an actress now playing Mama Torkelson on the television show “The Torkelsons,” originally wrote the play when she was out of work. She had been told that theaters wanted musicals. Not being a singer herself, she decided to write a musical with a part for a non-singer.

So she created the part of non-singing daughter June, who signs the songs for the hearing impaired, in the show’s 1989 premiere at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J. A successful off-Broadway run followed.

It’s hard to understand the show’s appeal for a non-church-going audience, however. For one thing, there isn’t much of a message besides the idea that you can celebrate the Lord with song and dance as well as with prayer (evidently a breakthrough for the folks at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church). For another, you have to really know church music to discern which songs are original, which are traditional and which are semi-comical relics of the 1950s and 1960s--”Christian Cowboy” and “I’ll Never Die--I’ll Just Change My Address.”

What Lamb’s does deliver, as usual, are skillful performances and professional design work, from Veronica Murphy’s authentic-looking costumes to Mike Buckley’s authentic-looking set. Driving the cast are ensemble members Deborah Gilmour Smyth (as Vera, the family matriarch) and David Cochran Heath as Pastor Mervin Oglethorpe, who is nervously, but excitedly, introducing the Sanders Family Singers to his staid congregation.

Lamb’s, which always uses local talent, also continues to nurture young performers here. Sarah Zimmerman, an 11th-grader at San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, plays daughter Denise (who yearns to be a movie star); Zimmerman pulls off singing and dramatic chores with ease, finding the humor within the character and never forcing jokes on the audience.

San Diego Junior Theatre veteran Jeremiah Elliott also does well as Denise’s nervous twin brother Dennis, whose mother has decided that he should become a preacher. Kerrie Gallagher laces the sugar with humor as the non-singing daughter, providing percussive accents with a variety of tools--from a Quaker Oats can to coconut halves. George Fish as the father, Burl, and Greg Campbell as Burl’s brother, Uncle Stanley, provide adept instrumental work.

The homey detailed realism of Buckley’s set heightens the sense of being in a church. For the first time in Lamb’s history as a theater in the round, the house has been reconfigured around a thrust stage. That’s really about the only innovative part about this “Smoke on the Mountain.” Perhaps the new arrangement will inspire some future scenic designs in what one can only hope will be a more ambitious 1993 season. Lamb’s has done and should do a lot better than this year’s sweet but vacuous productions of “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Nerd” and “The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall.”

“SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN”

By Connie Ray. Director, Kerry Meads. Musical direction, Vanda Eggington. Set, Mike Buckley. Costumes, Veronica Murphy. Lighting, C. Todd Brown. Stage manager, Barbara Smith. With George Fish, Deborah Gilmour Smyth, Greg Campbell, Sarah Zimmerman, Jeremiah Elliott and Kerrie Gallagher. Performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, with Saturday/Sunday matinees at 2, through Nov. 14. Tickets are $15-$19, with discounts for children under 16, seniors and active-duty military. At 500 Plaza Blvd., National City, 474-4542.