Turning On the Charm

It’s hate at first sight for the would-be sweethearts, and the course of true love never runs smooth for any of the other characters, either.

So what makes “She Loves Me” so winningly romantic? Well, perhaps its depiction of a relationship that’s a little closer to reality than all of those stories about love at first sight. And, perhaps, because victory is all the sweeter when it is hard-won.

Whatever the reason, the show works its magic all over again in a nicely performed and beautifully designed--if not always smooth-running--production at the Newport Theatre Arts Center.

Based on Hungarian Miklos Laszlo’s play “The Parfumerie” (as were the films “The Shop Around the Corner” and “In the Good Old Summertime”), the 1963 musical features a book by Joe Masteroff (who a few years later would collaborate on “Cabaret”) and music by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock (shortly to turn out “Fiddler on the Roof”). In keeping with the story’s setting in early ‘30s Budapest, the score dances with the light, waltzing rhythms of operetta.

For this community theater production, director Terri Miller Schmidt brings together many accomplished elements, but she didn’t quite have them all working in harmony by Friday’s opening. The energy never coalesced, so that the show--while charming--came off a bit limp.

The story focuses on co-workers in a toiletries shop who exchange lonely-hearts letters with correspondents they’ve never met. We see right away they are each other’s pen pals, but they don’t figure it out for quite a while. When they’re at work, in fact, they are barely able to behave civilly toward one another.

Robert Green--with his square-cut, football captain’s good looks--is uncommonly attractive for his role as the nebbishy Georg Nowack. But he puts enough chauvinistic swagger into his portrayal to make it believable that Karen Johnson’s Amalia Balash doesn’t immediately recognize him as her sensitive, letter-writing “Dear Friend.” Johnson’s Amalia is intriguingly dual-edged: sweetly demure yet steel-willed.

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They are at their best in the sequence in which Georg, who has figured out the situation before Amalia, first behaves tenderly toward her. Amalia, misunderstanding his intentions, storms about indignantly, but he determinedly plays the gentleman, and after he leaves, Amalia launches into the incandescent “Vanilla Ice Cream,” hugging a heart-shaped pillow as she realizes that, despite herself, she’s falling for him.

The showstopping performance, however, is turned in by Kristina Leach as fellow worker Ilona Ritter. Leach has the show’s all-out comic role as a peroxide blond with loose morals but an uncommonly true heart, and her squeaking, Betty Boop-eyed comic timing never fails.

Other performances fall short here and there, and the show’s comedy centerpiece--in which dishes and fists fly in a cheesy dive of a romantic restaurant--never spins as dizzily out of control as it should. The prerecorded music is a problem too. Often, it speeds ahead faster than the performers want to sing (or perhaps they just can’t hear it), and the two fall out of sync.

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Kudos, though, to the designers. For the story’s multiple settings, Larry Watts fills a manually operated turntable with a variety of carefully detailed scenes, from the pink-and-maroon toiletries shop to Amalia’s frilly apartment. (The one drawback: It leaves too little space for the dance numbers.) And Tom Phillips nicely color-coordinates his period costumes with the set, giving the production a unified look.

* “She Loves Me,” Newport Theatre Arts Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, matinees 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 21. $15. (714) 631-0288. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Robert Green: Georg Nowack

Karen Johnson: Amalia Balash

Kristina Leach: Ilona Ritter

Jon Sparks: Steven Kodaly

Jack Millis: Ladislav Sipos

Sean Singer: Arpad Laslo

David Kinwald: Mr. Maraczek

A Newport Theatre Arts Center production. Book by Joe Masteroff; lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; music by Jerry Bock. Directed by Terri Miller Schmidt. Music director: Terence Alaric. Choreographed by Melanie K. Jacobson. Set: Larry Watts. Costumes: Tom Phillips. Lights: John Fejes. Stage manager: Terri Collins.