THEATER REVIEW : ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ Loses Movie’s Magic

Sometimes wonderful stage musicals become weak movies; sometimes wonderful movie musicals become weak plays. The main difference for the consumer is that it costs a lot more to see a bad play than it does to see a bad movie.

So with “Meet Me in St. Louis” so widely available on video, it’s still hard to care about the de-flavorized stage version, even though it has been marginally improved for this latest rendition, a Music Theatre of Southern California production at San Gabriel Civic Auditorium.

The stage musical first came to the Southland in 1991, at Orange County Performing Arts Center. Later a non-Equity production passed through Cerritos. Both were substantially different from the 1989 Broadway version, and each was different from each other. For this latest version, initially produced in St. Louis last year, original songwriter Hugh Martin supervised still more changes, especially in the second act.

I had previously seen only the Orange County staging, where the second act stopped in its tracks for an irrelevant and silly production number paying tribute to the banjo. The banjo number is still here, but it’s not about the musical instrument. Now it’s about a dance called “the banjo,” which the young folks perform at a Christmas Eve party. It still doesn’t make much sense, but the San Gabriel dancers (choreographed by Rikki Lugo) stir up the evening with it, so it’s an improvement.

The same can’t be said for a number revived from the Broadway version, “A Touch of the Irish,” which is now the opening number of the second act. It’s a cliche and serves only as padding. And just for San Gabriel (as opposed to last year’s revival in St. Louis), Martin restored some juvenile comic business involving three goofy suitors at a dance--again, not an improvement.

All versions of the stage musical are in dire need of the movie’s celebrated Halloween sequence, which apparently was deemed too complicated to stage. Without it, the story seems at least twice as bland.

Not everything could be heard in the first scene of Bill Shaw’s San Gabriel staging on opening night. But the older siblings (Jennifer Hoover as Esther, Christine Hewitt as Rose, Craig A. Meyer as Lon) soon emerged with strong voices, and Hewitt and Meyer are pretty good dancers, too. The musical has some great tunes, a cute trolley and an impressive revolving Victorian house from San Bernardino Civic Light Opera.

* “Meet Me in St. Louis,” San Gabriel Civic Auditorium, 320 S. Mission Drive, San Gabriel. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays and May 20, 2 p.m. Ends May 21. $20-$40. (818) 308-2868. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.