STAGE REVIEW : ‘Lovely’ an Evening of Gentle Nostalgia

It’s hard to argue with the title of producer-director David Galligan’s musical revue, “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening,” revived at the Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre after a run at the Coast Playhouse last year.

Unless, that is, you don’t consider 85 minutes to be a full evening. About the lovely , however--this show is extremely careful not to venture into the unlovely. It’s an evening for gentle nostalgia, not for probing musical drama.

The show is ostensibly a tribute to lyricist Harold Adamson and composer Jimmy McHugh, and apparently one of them was involved in each of the show’s several dozen songs. But a number of other collaborators with McHugh or Adamson are also represented here. Unfortunately, these others go uncredited in the program, in contrast to the superbly annotated program that was passed out at the Coast.

You’ll know many of the songs, even if you don’t know precisely who wrote them: Among the titles are “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” “An Affair to Remember,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “I Won’t Dance,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “You” and that archetypal TV theme song “I Love Lucy.”

The cast has been trimmed from six last year to four, and it’s an appealing quartet, a well-balanced blend of looks and voices.

The men are a tall, dark baritone (Paul Cira) whose rumpled face takes him beyond conventional leading-man blankness, and a short, blond tenor (Bill Hutton) who can appear both angelic and scampish, sometimes in the same song. The women are brunette Patty Tiffany, who specializes in smart-talking comic solos, and blond soprano Marguerite Lowell, who approaches bombshell status with some of her moves, as choreographed by Kay Cole. Hutton and Lowell were in the earlier edition of the show.

The sole accompanist and occasional fifth voice is pianist John McDaniel, who co-conceived the show with Galligan.

The sequence of numbers is fairly scattered, but some of them have been joined into well-crafted medleys. Occasionally Cole’s choreography bends over so far backward to give a familiar song a new cast that it’s slightly distracting. But it’s better to err on the side of ingenuity than on the side of staleness, and Galligan knows when to end, as well as how to spend, this lovely “Evening.”

* “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening,” Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave. Today-Saturday, 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $20. (818) 356-PLAY. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.