Theater Reviews : ‘Will Rogers Follies’: Tune-in-Cheek Show

“The Will Rogers Follies” sure does create a hankerin’ for the good ol’ days. But they’re not the same good old days that the show’s creators had in mind.

Instead, this vacuous mishmash at the Pantages Theater makes you long for the time when people could write musicals as well as they could stage them.

Tommy Tune, who staged “Will Rogers,” is the main attraction--more than Rogers or Keith Carradine, who plays Rogers. The show exists primarily as a playground for Tune and his designers.

His biggest hurdle was being saddled with Rogers’ life story. At least as related in Peter Stone’s hagiographic script, that story was virtually devoid of drama. Sure, Mrs. Rogers (Dee Hoty) wishes Will would spend more time at home, but that’s hardly enough of a conflict to support a big musical.

And so the biography is presented with a Tune-in-cheek twist. It’s the present day, or so it says in the program. The legendary Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (the taped voice of Gregory Peck) has returned from the dead to present a new revue based on the life of one of his biggest stars, Rogers.

Mr. Z periodically interrupts the proceedings in order to make the pieces of Rogers’ life conform to the structural standards of his glitzy genre--the wedding has to end the first act, for example, though Will and wife have already been married for seven years. Is this technique used to illustrate how the packaging of showbiz legends can submerge the truth? No, thanks, it’s merely a gimmick in service of Tune’s visions.

Stone makes sure that everyone including Rogers knows how the story will end--with his fatal 1935 plane crash. But does this make Rogers’ odyssey through his life particularly painful or wonderful? Sorry--this isn’t “Our Town.” Rogers’ awareness of his mortality serves merely as a device for a few more jokes.

The cowboy philosopher gets to toss in a few contemporary wisecracks. But it’s tame stuff. The nightly talk-show monologues are more provocative.

Rogers also aims a few supposedly disarming cracks at the show itself, and in truth, the flabby book might matter less if the dances were more gripping. But the routines are, well, more routine than we expect from Tune.

His Busby Berkeley impulses take precedence over his choreography. The “New Ziegfeld Girls” don’t dance so much as preen and play patty-cake. (For the record, this chorus line is racially integrated, unlike opening night in New York, which drew some flak.)

The most impressive movement comes not from a dancer but from master rope twirler Tomas Garcilazo, in a black-light number at the beginning of the second act. The dog act is pretty good, too.

Tony Walton’s sets and Willa Kim’s costumes, lit by Jules Fisher, do their requisite bedazzling. Rawhide and cheesecake are the themes du jour. Indeed, there haven’t been this many peekaboo fashions onstage since--well, since a few weeks ago, when “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” was at the same theater. If the Pantages could only install slot machines, it could bill itself as Las Vegas West.

Most of the anatomy on display is female, and the show is also aimed at men in other ways. Rogers’ dad (George Riddle) is a recurrent second banana, but his mother is kept offstage and goes virtually unmentioned. Rogers’ wife, the only woman character who isn’t a bimbo or virtually anonymous, nevertheless forgets her troubles when Rogers offers her jewels.

This preposterous jewel number, “Presents for Mrs. Rogers,” is rudely interrupted by the Depression. Workers suddenly remove the glitter from the stage, prompting Rogers to deliver a little speech about the unfair distribution of wealth. This is on top of a lame pro-ecology ditty earlier in the second act. Ah, you see, the show does have a social conscience. But at this point, it seems half-hearted at best, hypocritical at worst.

Carradine’s voice adds a breath of pure Oklahoma to the soundtrack (too bad there also was more than a breath of static on opening night), but his gaping grin looks affected. Hoty sings with fervor in a couple of numbers, but they’re presented with such ironic detachment in the script that it’s hard to take them seriously. Without any genuine satire or commentary, all this makes for nothing more than a bunch of pretty pictures.

* “The Will Rogers Follies,” Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 26. $30-$55. (213) 480-3232. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Keith Carradine: Will Rogers

Dee Hoty: Betty Blake

George Riddle: Clem Rogers

Leigh Zimmerman: Ziegfeld’s Favorite

Ron Kidd or Dan Sharkey: Wiley Post

Gregory Peck: The Voice of Mr. Ziegfeld

Tomas Garcilazo: Roper

Jeff Williams: Mr. Ziegfeld’s Stage Manager

Eric Goldin, Moriah Snyder, Christy Romano, Thomas O’Connell II: Rogers children

Paulette Braxton, Blaine Mastalir, Stacie James, Christine

Tarallo: Indian soloists

Bob Moore, Jeanne Moore: The Wild West Show

Laurel Lynn Collins, Sutton Foster, Dana Leigh Jackson,

Gina Keys, Julie Lamar, Lisa Mandel: Will’s Sisters

Abe Reybold, Jeff Williams, Michael Lee Wright: Other Wranglers

Holly Cruikshank, Wendy Leahy, Wendy Palmer, Francie

Provine, Jane Sonderman, Tracy Terstriep, Victoria L.

Waggoner: Other Ziegfeld Girls

Producer and general partner Pierre Cossette. Producers Martin Richards, Sam Crothers, James M. Nederlander, Stewart F. Lane, Max Weitzenhoffer, William E. Simon. Directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune. Book Peter Stone. Composer-arranger Cy Coleman. Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Sets Tony Walton. Costumes Willa Kim. Lighting Jules Fisher. Sound Peter Fitzgerald. Projections Wendall Harrington. Wigs Howard Leonard. Orchestrations Billy Byers. Musical director Kay Cameron.