‘Saturday Night’ Shows Sondheim’s Roots

The buoyant glow of youthful exuberance irradiates Stephen Sondheim and Julius J. Epstein’s “Saturday Night.” And if Monday night’s Pasadena Playhouse performance launching Musical Theatre Guild’s seventh season of rarified musicals in concert was representative, this near-50-year-old charm show won’t stay rarified much longer.

In 1955, the adaptation of Epstein’s play “Front Porch in Flatbush” (co-written with twin brother Philip G. Epstein, as was “Casablanca”) was to have been 24-year-old composer-lyricist Sondheim’s first Broadway musical. But after producer Lemuel Ayers’ tragic death canceled the production, “Saturday Night” languished largely unrealized.

Sondheim finally resurrected it in 1997 in London. A 1999 staging at Chicago’s Pegasus Theatre was followed by an off-Broadway production in 2000, with Monday’s performance marking its local premiere.

Spanning three consecutive Saturdays in the spring of 1929, the plot follows ambitious Wall Street runner Gene Gorman (Noel Orput), whose fellow Flatbush bachelors (Brian McDonald, Richard Israel, Tom McMahon and James Cooper) establish their priorities in the winning title number: “I like the Sunday Times all right--but not in bed / Alive and alone on a Saturday night is dead.”

Married pair Celeste (Eydie Alyson) and Hank (Kevin McMahon) complicate the dating equation by introducing Mildred (Shauna Markey) to the lascivious porch-sitters. Youngest crony Bobby (Reed Prescott) boasts of his conquests, but he’s not altogether convincing.

More successful at camouflage is Gene, his upper-crust aspirations driving Epstein’s old-fashioned boys-and-girls-together scenario. After crashing a Plaza Hotel party, Gene meets the pragmatic heroine, Helen (the marvelous Kim Huber), her Southern-fried accent disguising her own Brooklyn origins.

Further synopsis would only evoke dizziness. Suffice it to say that, amid complications blending screwball and sentiment, Gene abandons his hollow ambitions by evening’s end.

Epstein’s solid book cleanly motivates Sondheim’s uniformly wonderful songs, their wholehearted accessibility belying the usual charges of emotional distance and melodic deficiency while anticipating the future mastery of deconstruction and pastiche.

This certainly describes the Act 1 closer, “One Wonderful Day,” with its initial lift of Leonard Bernstein’s “Christopher Street” vamp from “Wonderful Town” blossoming into a rocketing group number recalling Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane at their peak.

Similar craftsmanship graces Bobby’s “Exhibit A,” an instructional guide to seduction approaching Frank Loesser; and the Hank-Celeste duet “I Remember That,” which presages “I Remember It Well” from “Gigi.” On Monday night, these guileless pleasures were well-served by director Michael Michetti, musical director Nick DeGregorio, wardrobe designer Peter A. Lovello and choreographer Lee Martino, as well as by the whole cast. Included among their number were Melissa Fahn, Michael Lorre, Chuck Bergman, Doug Ballard, Gerrard Carter, Yvette Tucker and the scene-stealing cameos of Joshua Finkel and Kathryn Skatula.

Given the limited rehearsal time, any occasional fluffed lines, blurred harmonies or microphone feedback seemed immaterial in the face of such joyous moxie. My chief complaint with “Saturday Night” was that it ended.

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“Saturday Night” will repeat at Thousand Oaks Performing Arts Center, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Oct. 20, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.