They’re fiddlers on the hoof

The plot line’s a groaner, the dancing’s so-so, it’s as hokey as heck

“Barrage,” the theatrical phenomenon frequently compared to “Riverdance,” “Blast” and other such clamorous stage events, is in town, making joyful noise with its most recent touring production, “Vagabond Tales.” Presented by Theater League, it made its first local stop at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium over the weekend.

Featuring a pastiche of jazz, pop, klezmer, Celtic, bluegrass and Spanish-style pieces played as solos, duets and in groups, the show takes place within a narrative about star-crossed lovers from two vagabond tribes, who are “destined to be together and doomed to be apart,” according to the unseen narrator, whose tones of hush and portent veer irresistibly toward parody.

Not much in the way of character development takes place onstage.

No matter. The featherweight plot is just a setup for all the good stuff: an often funny, wild and woolly sort of battle of the bands featuring drums, gongs, bells, xylophone, guitars, spoons, big exercise balls and many violins, whose bows are used not only for playing, but also for tossing and flourishing, for whipping sound effects -- and dueling.

The musical cast, dressed in figure-hugging motley (jeans, scarves, sashes, stretch tops, corsets and vests), includes bass guitarist Tim Harley, guitarist Jason Graham, percussionist Bob Fenske, drummer Jonathan McCaslin (whose “Sing, Sing, Sing” solo stops the show) and seven violinists: Seonaid Aitken, Matthew Harney, Carly Frey, Benjamin Gunnery, Mitchell Grobb, Jessica Hindlin and Thomas Sidebottom.

These violinists-slash-fiddlers play with such furious abandon, individually and in unison, that by all rights, their instruments should either shatter or erupt into smoke and flames.

All the while, without missing a note, they leap, slide, jump, prance and arch backward, heads nearly touching the floor. They do chorus-line kicks and a lot of bouncy stuff on boxes and exercise balls. If the execution of director Brian Hansen’s basic choreography is a bit hit or miss, the exuberant physicality makes up for it.

Fenske, meanwhile, supplies comic relief and electronic banjo, Chinese gongs, bells, drums, xylophone and taps on the violins when nothing else will suit.

The cast sings pleasingly too; Aitken scores with a scat version of “Birdland.”

Music director Dean Marshall did the original compositions and arrangements, and if some of the selections are rather perplexing -- “Live and Let Die”? -- even the most familiar soar into new territory with rousing riffs.

The whole fiddle-happy shebang may not be as slickly packaged as others of its kind, but with musical chops that won’t quit, all-ages accessibility and electric zing, it’s as likable as they come.

*

‘Barrage’

Where: Terrace Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd.

When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Ends: Sunday

Price: $15 to $45.50

Contact: (213) 365-3500, (714) 740-7878, www.ticketmaster.com

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes