REVIEW : Opera Hits a Homer in ‘Damn Yankees’

There’s a percussive nightclub dance number called “Two Lost Souls” in the San Gabriel Civic Light Opera’s revival of “Damn Yankees” that sets the stage on fire and single-handedly earmarks a kind of musical epiphany in the stature and growth of the company.

Choreographer Rikki Lugo, blessed with a surprisingly agile star (Tom Bisom), a sinewy temptress (ReNae Larsen Davis) and a terrific chorus of male dancers hoofing it in the baseball uniforms of the old Washington Senators, has outdone herself.

The entire production, under the direction of Bill Shaw, hits a home run in the only popular Broadway musical to draw on sports as the source of its plot and lyrics.

This flavorful hotdog-and-peanuts confection made Gwen Verdon a star on Broadway in 1955 with the hot number “Whatever Lola Wants.”

And when Warner Bros. released the movie version a few years later, the show included the great Yankee sluggers Mickey Mantle and Hank Bauer.

So much for history.

“Damn Yankees” may be 38 years old and rarely staged anymore--although the Monrovia Center Theatre did it last year--but its Faustian story line is timeless.

The show was inspired by “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” a novel by Douglass Wallop, although the musical is actually not about the Yankees, but rather the-then miserable Washington Senators.

The team’s hero, who sells his soul for fame, is portrayed with arrow-straight humility by the tall, handsome Bisom, whose character, Joe Hardy, rather echoes the Robert Redford slugger in the movie “The Natural.”

It’s that kind of show--with music.

Musical director M. Roger Lockie’s orchestra brings verve to the score, by Richard Adler, while the cast strongly handles the lyrics by Jerry Ross.

Unlike many big musicals in which the music muffles the lyrics, you can hear every word here. On occasion, the vocalizing soars, as in club manager Taylor Jay Thompson’s locker-room song “Heart”--as in “you gotta have . . . .”

The panorama of sets, taking advantage of vividly painted scrims to emulate a ballpark, are enlivened by the versatile lighting design of Anita Elevi. An Lisa Johnson’s costumes (down to the pin-striped uniforms) perfectly delineate character.

As the Faust character with the name Applegate, Steve Gaghagen materializes through an exploding divan in a cloud of red smoke. Gaghagen and Davis, as his sexy mistress in Hellish red, have fun with their serpentine roles. On occasion, special-effects flames zap from the Devil’s fingertips.

In fact, it’s Gaghagen who triggers one of the biggest laughs when he suddenly leaps into a randy imitation of his purring assistant’s “Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets).”

Choreographer Lugo recreated tap routines originally choreographed by Bob Fosse and worked wonders: Some very beefy, corpulent guys (such as dancers David O’Guinn and Darryl D. Winslow) are sufficiently sublime on their toes to pass for those graceful dancing hippos in “Fantasia.”

It’s small roles such as these, in a huge cast of 35, that embody the warmth of the production.

That thonk you hear is the crack of the bat at the SGCLO.

* ‘Damn Yankees’

San Gabriel Civic Auditorium, 320 S. Mission Drive, San Gabriel, Thursday-Saturday, 8:15 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2:15 p.m. Ends May 23. $18-$35. (818) 797-8019. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.