More slapdash than sensational

“Life is a banquet,” the high-spirited socialite Mame Dennis loves to say, urging those around her to partake to the fullest.

An empowered and empowering woman, Mame had already captured the popular imagination by the time her story -- elevated from popular novel to stage and screen legend in the comedy “Auntie Mame” -- was enshrined in the 1966 musical “Mame.” Audiences idolized this woman who refused to live as others thought she should, even though a real-life Mame, overseeing her 10-year-old nephew’s training in the art of martini mixing and exposing him to all sorts of boozy crackpots, no doubt would have prompted calls to the child welfare department.

The musical -- chockablock with memorable Jerry Herman tunes and seen at an impressionable age by many of today’s theatergoers -- remains an enduring favorite. Little wonder, then, that on Sunday night the show followed “Carousel,” “Show Boat,” “The Music Man” and “My Fair Lady” in what has, in five years, become a tradition of including a semi-staged musical in the Hollywood Bowl season.

Last summer’s “My Fair Lady,” headlined by John Lithgow and Roger Daltrey, emerged as one of the year’s theatrical highlights. “Mame,” unfortunately, seemed awfully slapdash, jerking along in halts and spurts, with jittery energy substituting for wry nuance.

Michele Lee, in the title role, came across as particularly manic. The breathlessness of her performance no doubt could be attributed to the rigors of umpteen rushed costume changes and the necessities of racing across the Bowl’s vast stage. But she compounded matters by charging through the production wild-eyed, shouting with such force that she sent echoes through the Bowl’s still-touchy new sound system, when a mere repeat of the breezy zest she brought to “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” at the Ahmanson Theatre two years ago would have pulled her through.

Fortunately, the story calls for at least a couple of moments of introspection, which prompted Lee to drop to a lower gear and use her smoky, autumnal singing voice to better effect in the duet “My Best Girl,” opposite sweet-voiced Benjamin Platt as young nephew Patrick, and in the torchy stunner of a solo, “If He Walked Into My Life.”

In these small moments, the audience could be happy for the two screens that have been added to the sides of the Bowl stage, to project images of the onstage action. The mass scenes -- in which director Gordon Hunt and choreographer Kay Cole sent the large cast parading across Bradley Kaye’s symbolically door- and window-filled set -- were big enough to fill the Bowl on their own. But the solos and duets, including the saucy “Bosom Buddies,” which found Christine Ebersole hamming it up opposite Lee, benefited from the camera close-ups.

Forty-five players in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra responded joyously to John Mauceri as he conducted from Philip J. Lang’s brassy original orchestrations.

The audience of 10,261 greeted this effort enthusiastically and also applauded the dishy beau played by John Schneider, who filtered his baritone through a Dixie accent as smooth as a swig of Southern Comfort, and the squeaky-voiced Allyce Beasley as the comically misfortune-prone nanny and secretary.