At 45, ‘Saturday Night’ Gets Its Chance

For a while, it looked as if “Saturday Night’ had an excellent shot at the 1955-1956 Broadway season. It never made it, owing to the death of its prospective producer. But better a late New York debut than never.

Through the weekend, on the island across from the borough where the story mostly takes place, Stephen Sondheim’s first full-length show continues at off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre.

Sondheim wrote the score (music and lyrics) when he was in his early 20s, after contributing some episodes of the television version of “Topper.” “Saturday Night” had a book by Julius J. Epstein, co-author of “Casablanca,” based on a play Epstein wrote with his brother, “Front Porch in Flatbush.”

What if the show had made it to Broadway 45 years ago? How might it have altered Sondheim’s career? Would he have agreed to contribute lyrics only to “West Side Story” and “Gypsy”? Would he have even been offered those shows? And on and on.

Hindsight’s cheap. Though some of its songs have been heard on stages in recent years (notably in the revue “Marry Me a Little”), “Saturday Night” finally came out of the trunk for a recent small-scale production in Chicago, followed by another in London.

Director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall’s Second Stage rendition could scarcely be bettered. It’s relaxed and accomplished and doesn’t make the mistake of turning this modest 1929-set neighborhood affair into something it cannot be.

Call these guys “The Serfs of Flatbush,” angling for something bigger. Ringleader Gene (David Campbell), a runner on pre-crash Wall Street, wants the finer things in life. He takes his friends’ investment money and rents a Park Avenue apartment as a sort of dare to himself. His ruses are like dominoes, falling one after another. Gene’s soul mate (Lauren Ward) wonders if her man is a reformable kook, or something more sociopathic.

So does the audience. This is (and always was) the show’s problem. Gene’s deceptions and delusions of grandeur grow increasingly aggravating in Epstein’s book.

Still, Sondheim makes it sing with improbable, surprisingly sophisticated insouciance. The title song is a pleasure, laced with supple four-part harmony designed for four guys looking for dates. (The 10-piece band orchestrations come from Sondheim’s finest collaborator, Jonathan Tunick.) “Love’s a Bond” amuses with its fiduciary Tin Pan Alley rhyme scheme. “I Remember That,” sung by period-perfect Clark Thorell (a ringer for Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys) and superb, no-nonsense Andrea Burns, works the same idea arrived at a few years later by Lerner & Loewe in “I Remember It Well.”

A new Sondheim show co-authored by John Weidman, “Wise Guys,” was originally slated for this spring on Broadway. It may get there yet. For now, we have this fond glance back at a road traveled half a lifetime ago, by a great American composer and lyricist.

* “Saturday Night,” Second Stage Theatre, 307 W. 43rd St., New York. Ends Sunday. $46-$61. (800) 766-6048.