‘New Yorkers’: Paying a Satirical Visit to the Ultra-Jaded

You think New York’s a tough town nowadays?

In a scene from the 1930 musical comedy “The New Yorkers,” a Musical Theatre West production at La Mirada Theatre, a fashionable woman at a high-rise party is thrown out the window. All party guests pack pistols and are willing to use them in a flash. Bernhard Goetz might feel right at home.

Sex is mostly extramarital. Spouses openly carry on affairs without blushing. One of the double-entendres in Herbert Fields’ script is so graphic, it’s worthy of gasps (you won’t read it here; it’s better as a surprise in the theater).

The most famous song from the original score is “Love for Sale,” the now-classic prostitutes’ anthem. Back then, it was initially sung by an actress playing a white prostitute, but the producer--fearing protests on racial as well as sexual grounds--reassigned it to four black showgirls at the show’s version of the Cotton Club. In La Mirada it’s sung by a trio unmistakably playing white streetwalkers (Pamela Leon, Dawn Spence, Christy Mauro).

Heaven knows, anything goes.

“The New Yorkers,” with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, makes his much more familiar ‘30s musical “Anything Goes” look tame. While the book for the more famous show often seems plain silly, the book for “The New Yorkers” is more pointedly satirical and almost surreal--as well as silly. The New Yorkers here are ultra-jaded so that we might laugh at them.

The score includes the witty solo “But He Never Said He Loved Me” (perhaps better known as “The Physician,” a cabaret standard), “The Extra Gal” and “Take Me Back to Manhattan.” Then there is “Say It With Gin,” a bootleggers’ chorus, or the deliriously nutty “Sing Sing for Sing Sing,” a tribute to the famous New York prison, sung here with pompoms flying.

In this version of Sing Sing, manicured prisoners are clad in fashionable black-and-white striped smoking jackets, and the guards are leggy chorines. Although the inmates stage a jailbreak, mowing down guards as they go, the guards recover in order to sing again.

In fact, no one actually dies in this show. The woman who was heaved out the window survives. An all-purpose nemesis (Warren Draper)--first a thug, then a cop--keeps biting the bullet, only to reappear. Gee, maybe New York wasn’t so tough after all.

Four better-known Porter songs, not originally in “The New Yorkers,” were added to the current set of revivals (of which this is the West Coast version): “Let’s Do It,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Ev’rybod-ee Who’s Anybod-ee” and the more famous of two Porter songs with the title “Just One of Those Things” (the less famous one actually was introduced in “The New Yorkers” but was replaced by the more famous one in this version).

Anthony Stimac, who supervised the reconstruction of the “lost” show and directed it elsewhere, conducted final rehearsals for this production after the original director, Luke Yankee, resigned last Friday because of creative differences with the producers. Considering this behind-the-scenes turmoil and the semi-professionalism of the cast (by union standards), the production was in surprisingly good shape Sunday, despite a misbehaving sound system.

Charlotte Carpenter plays Alice Wentworth, the show’s glamorous center of swank, parading around in Shon LeBlanc’s sleek outfits as if she were born in them. Socialite Alice consults a Viennese psychiatrist (Zale Morris) in the first scene, so most of the show is a flashback from her perspective. She utters wisecracks that sound like lines from a New Yorker cartoon--not surprising, for that magazine’s cartoonist Peter Arno helped conceive the original show.

Terry Rhoads has a firm grasp on Al Spanish, the handsome mug Alice loves (but will their social stations separate them?). Tracy Lore unveils the cast’s biggest voice in her role as the star at Al’s Toro nightclub. As Al’s main henchman, Howard Mango suggests a young Jimmy Durante in a role Durante played on Broadway.

Hank Wilson and Maree Cheatham are perfectly cast as Alice’s prosperous, philandering parents. Each has a young lover: a platinum bimbo (Jennifer Stein) for him and a tall Englishman (Bart McHenry) for her. John Andrew Ryan plays Alice’s dull fiance, who improbably finds a lover of his own.

Lee Martino’s choreography isn’t memorable, but Dennis Castellano directs a sprightly band. Wally Huntoon’s skyline abstractions look better than his interiors.

* “The New Yorkers,” La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends May 12. $28-$30. (310) 944-9801 or (714) 994-6310. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Charlotte Carpenter: Alice Wentworth

Terry Rhoads: Al Spanish

Tracy Lore: Mona Low

Maree Cheatham: Gloria Wentworth

Hank Wilson: Dr. Wentworth

Howard Mango: Jimmy Deegan

Bart McHenry: Hillary Trask

Jennifer Stein: Lola McGee

John Andrew Ryan: James Livingston

Warren Draper: Feet McGeehan

Zale Morris: Dr. Courtlandt Jenks

Joseph Bearss: Mildew

A Musical Theatre West production. Book by Herbert Fields. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Choreographer Lee Martino. Musical director Dennis Castellano. Sets by Wally Huntoon. Costumes by Shon Le Blanc. Lighting by Jacqueline Jones Watson. Sound by David Edwards. Orchestrations by Milton Granger. Production stage manager Lisa Palmire.