‘Crazy for You’ Dances Onto Small Screen

As smash-hit musicals become ever rarer, the emergence of such shows as “Crazy for You” give us cause for hope even as they deepen our despair.

Advertised in 1991 as “the new Gershwin musical comedy,” “Crazy for You” was “new” in that it featured a new script by Ken Ludwig, as well as new dances by an imaginative, then-emerging choreographer, Susan Stroman. Yet as with the more recent “Fosse,” it was, in essence, a reconstruction of material by talent long lost and never quite replaced.

Winner of three Tony Awards (including best musical and best choreography) on Broadway and acclaimed in its 1993 Los Angeles presentation, “Crazy for You” finally reaches a broader public tonight as KCET and KVCR air a great-looking production of it at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, which was taped for PBS’ “Great Performances” series.

“Crazy for You” was built from elements of the 1930 George and Ira Gershwin musical “Girl Crazy.”

Retaining just the barest outline of the original book, Ludwig (of “Lend Me a Tenor” fame) and director Mike Ockrent conceived a new story about a stage-struck New York banker who is sent to Deadrock, Nev., a tapped-out mining town, to foreclose on a theater. Once there, he’s smitten with the owner’s daughter and, seeing a chance to indulge his show-biz fantasies, save the theater and impress the girl, he stages a show.

The story is incidental to the dancing, however.

*

From the original score, such songs as “Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm” and “But Not for Me” have been kept, and other Gershwin greats have been added.

In dance after dance, Stroman finds new areas of invention even as she (along with Ludwig in his script) pays homage to numerous stage and movie musicals.

In “Shall We Dance?,” Jim Walton’s banker finally induces a reluctant Stacey Logan to dance with him by playfully bumping into her. Her resulting stumbles are her first steps in what gradually evolves into a romantic Fred-and-Ginger spin along the dusty streets.

In “Slap That Bass,” guys wrap chorus girls in their arms and “play” them like basses, and in “I Got Rhythm,” the dancers incorporate mining implements, from gold-mining pans to pickaxes, into an exuberant tap number.

The original production--which was re-created for Paper Mill earlier this year by James Brennan and choreographer Angelique Ilo, and supervised for television by Ockrent and Stroman--is preserved in glorious form, although the blackout/lights-up transitions between several scenes seem awfully abrupt. The 2 1/2-hour show is presented in letterbox format, so that the action is framed much as it was on the proscenium stage. Director for television Matthew Diamond has good instincts for when to pull back or close in.

There is plenty of ache here, some of it on the screen, still more of it in our longing for the age when the Gershwins and so many other greats wrote music for the American stage.

* “Crazy for You” airs tonight at 8:30 on KCET and KVCR. PBS has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).