THEATER REVIEW : ‘Blues in the Night’ Sizzles at San Diego’s Old Globe

As the end of the millennium approaches, musical revues soar in popularity as a way to remember the best of decades past. Revues are also a way to avoid high production costs in harsh economic times.

Those two concerns combined usually results in singing heads, glitteringly adorned, impeccably and impersonally performing works grouped by composer or genre, where performers smile and bow after the n th number about their broken hearts.

But in the best revues, songs emanate from real people.

“Blues in the Night,” conceived and directed at the Old Globe by visiting associate artistic director Sheldon Epps, is among the best.

*

The show, a 1983 Tony Award nominee and seen at Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1990, puts more than two dozen numbers by Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen and others into the mouths of four types living the music in a seedy Chicago hotel in the 1930s.

Vickilyn Reynolds, big in talent and body, delights as The Lady, an over-the-hill singer belting out fabulously funny double entendre numbers as she dreams of her comeback. The lithe Alisa Gyse-Dickens exudes a Blanche du Bois eloquence as The Woman (a woman who has seen better days), seductively wrapping her body around her dances and voice around her songs.

Kimberly Jajuan gives a poignant twist to the hopeful Girl who is destined to age into The Woman and then The Lady. And Billy Davis Jr. is all suave style as The Man who devils their dreams in the night.

Rahn Coleman’s musical direction captures the spirit of the blues as do Marianna Elliott’s costumes and Patricia Wilcox’s steamy choreography. But Douglas D. Smith’s set design says it all with the HOT of the neon HOTEL sign gleaming through an oversized window. HOT is the right word for this show.

* “Blues in the Night,” Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Sundays, 7 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends March 6. $23-$34. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.