Not like the ones you used to know

It’s a feel-good bonanza: The boys get the girls, the boys help out their old Army general and everyone gets infused with holiday spirit to the strains of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

Such warmth of feeling is a key reason the 1954 movie “White Christmas” remains a seasonal staple and a fond part of many people’s memories. One might also expect it, then, to fuel the engine of the stage version that some canny producers and a passel of Broadway talents are trying to turn into a holiday tradition in cities across the country. But heart is one of the qualities most notably missing from the cold, empty extravaganza being introduced to Los Angeles this year at the Pantages Theatre.

Oh, there’s plenty to ooh and aah over. Tap-dancing multitudes form themselves into crisp geometric patterns. A two-story clapboard Vermont inn and its rustic barn keep materializing with what seems like magic. Everyone is dressed to vintage perfection in crisp suits and flouncy dresses. And the cast launches into one well-loved Berlin tune after another.

But you know what they say about tampering with success. There appears to be no element of this project that those involved didn’t feel could be done bigger than in the original -- which was plenty big enough already. In the process, they lost sight of what was truly important.

The story’s outline, at least, remains much as it did in the movie. Just before Christmas 1954, Army buddies and song-and-dance partners Bob Wallace (Brian d’Arcy James, in the Bing Crosby role) and Phil Davis (Jeffry Denman, in the Danny Kaye part) check out a sister act and become romantically tangled with Betty (Anastasia Barzee, in the Rosemary Clooney role) and Judy Haynes (Meredith Patterson, taking the Vera Ellen part). Phil tricks Bob into a trip to Vermont, where the sisters have a gig at an inn. The proprietor turns out to be none other than the guys’ former Army general (David Ogden Stiers), who’s about to go bankrupt. So everyone puts on a show to draw some business to the place.

The most memorable Berlin songs from the movie are repeated here, including “Sisters,” “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing,” “Snow,” “Count Your Blessings,” “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me” and, of course, the title tune. A couple of songs sped over, montage-style, in the movie -- “Let Me Sing and I’m Happy” and “Blue Skies” -- are expanded here to full-out production numbers. Other songs have been deleted or swapped for new ones.

As before, the romantic back-and-forth pairs the serious-minded types, Bob and Betty, into one couple, and the happy-go-lucky Phil and Judy into the other. However, some new attempts at humor by scriptwriters David Ives (“All in the Timing”) and Paul Blake are awfully heavy-handed. Making the inn’s second-in-command, played by Ruth Williamson, a former performer who angles for a return to the spotlight, for instance, is one showbiz cliche too many. Other additions -- a flamboyant stage manager and pokey local-yokel stagehand -- are outright insulting to the audience’s intelligence.

The four leads are the same actors who launched this holiday juggernaut last year in San Francisco. Barzee makes a particularly strong impression, her dusky, mezzo-ish soprano emphasizing the torchy texture to “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me,” which here is paired with D’Arcy James’ lovelorn rendition of “How Deep Is the Ocean.” The creative types have miscalculated, however, by making Bob such a stick-in-the-mud. He grouches even through the exuberant “Snow” number, which makes him so thoroughly Scrooge-like that even D’Arcy James’ natural warmth can’t penetrate the deep freeze until all but too late.

The choreography occasionally makes reference to the movie work of Robert Alton, but choreographer Randy Skinner, who oversaw the dances in the 2001 revival of “42nd Street,” gets to go his own way with such big new numbers as “Blue Skies,” in which the white-tuxedoed chorus tips its fedoras at precise angles, in crisp lines, and the tap-happy “I Love a Piano,” in which an elevator lifts a line of fancy-footing chorus boys above the peppy Denman and Patterson and the mass of chorus girls on the floor.

Where musicals are concerned, bigger is usually better, and this production certainly is substantial, with its cast of 28, under the direction of Walter Bobbie, Tony winner for the 1996 revival of “Chicago,” and orchestra of 24, conducted by Steven Freeman.

But this show feels a thousand miles away, even as it’s trying to explode off the stage.

*

‘White Christmas’

Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Check for variations.

Ends: Jan. 1

Price: $25 to $87

Contact: (213) 365-3500 or www.BroadwayLA.org

Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

Brian d’Arcy James...Bob Wallace

Jeffry Denman...Phil Davis

Anastasia Barzee...Betty Haynes

Meredith Patterson...Judy Haynes

David Ogden Stiers...Gen. Henry Waverly

Book by David Ives and Paul Blake. Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Production based on the 1954 movie, screenplay by Norman Krasna, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. Director Walter Bobbie. Choreography Randy Skinner. Musical supervision Rob Berman. Sets Anna Louizos. Costumes Carrie Robbins. Lights Ken Billington. Orchestrations Larry Blank; vocal and dance arrangements Bruce Pomahac.