Gershwin Program Largely Lacks Spark

Since one month after the composer’s death in 1937, Hollywood Bowl has regularly celebrated the music of George Gershwin. This year, John Mauceri built a promising Gershwin program to be played by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, with the second half devoted to excerpts from the legendary show “Girl Crazy” (1930).

But Friday’s performance, repeated Saturday and Sunday, proved lackluster.

The agenda was generous. The “Girl Crazy” portion was long if anticlimactic and was followed by an exciting fireworks show accompanying (and eventually drowning out) Bruce Healey’s arrangement of “Strike Up the Band.”

The irrepressible Mauceri even added an encore--but by that time it was nearly 11 p.m., and many in the medium-size weekend audience were already clambering out of the amphitheater.

The most famous songs of “Girl Crazy”--”But Not for Me,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “Bidin’ My Time”--certainly deserve continued recycling. Yet the quaint and dated parts of the score, like “Cactus Time in Arizona,” “Could You Use Me?” “Boy! What Love Has Done to Me” and “Treat Me Rough,” do not repay close scrutiny.

Mauceri’s devotion to all this music--weak or timeless, inspired or serviceable--was again unflagging. What faltered was the listener’s interest.

Broadway singer Lorna Luft displayed performing energy and a hoarse voice in her vamp duties; she was nicely if blandly seconded in the leading roles taken by Jodi Benson and Harry Groener. The Mitch Hanlon Singers, all dressed up in dude ranch costumes, contributed reliably.

Disappointing for a lack of focus and projection, the first part of this performance, for which Leon Bates was the piano soloist, failed to imbue both “Rhapsody in Blue” and the “I Got Rhythm” variations with charm or that sense of rediscovery one has come to expect in these virtually annual Gershwin events.

We have heard Bates play more convincingly--and with closer to immaculate technique. We have memorably encountered the “Rhapsody” in more fully integrated and high-energy incarnations, in this very locale.