The same old joint

Several years ago, Richard Maltby Jr. went to see a revival of “Ain’t Misbehavin,’ ” his Tony-winning homage to the composer-pianist-raconteur Thomas “Fats” Waller. The cast and production values were great, he recalls, “but 30 seconds in I turned to my son and said, ‘This show is dead.’ ”

What was wrong?

“They were just singing the songs. There wasn’t any interplay.”

Indeed, chemistry -- flirtatious, pugnacious or otherwise -- helped make “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” a sleeper hit in the ‘70s and set it apart from all the jukebox musicals that (true to their name) seemed content to spew out oldies. This intimate revue savored each note and syllable, from succulent “Honeysuckle Rose” to melancholy “Black and Blue.” Its five performers bickered and cooed with one another and with the audience. They knew, after all, that Waller was famous for his extravagant asides as well as his infectious music.

Maltby and Murray Horwitz, who co-conceived the show, also knew that in Waller’s world -- the rent parties and cool clubs of ‘20s and ‘30s Harlem -- life is rarely what it seems. Lovers, for instance, swear fidelity while courting on the sly. “Nobody tells the truth,” Maltby explains, “until the few moments when they drop the pose and say what’s in their hearts. We took great care to be authentic about that.”

To his chagrin, some recent revivals have, as he puts it, “let our work slip away.”

Eager to set things straight, Maltby, 71, seized on an invitation from the Center Theatre Group to direct a 30th-anniversary version of “Ain’t Misbehavin.’ ” He calls the production, which opens tonight at the Ahmanson Theatre, “my chance to reclaim the show.”

Maltby has brought together members of the original creative team, including choreographer Arthur Faria and scenic designer John Lee Beatty, as well as one of the original stars, Armelia McQueen. Almost everyone involved in the project caught Maltby’s eye while working on “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” in some incarnation or another.

“This production is the first time we’ve had a hand-picked cast,” says Faria. “We can do the show the way the show needs to be done.”

A series of surprises helped propel “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” from cabaret act to Broadway phenomenon. In the late ‘70s, Horwitz introduced Maltby, 71, to the music of Waller, who reigned as one of America’s jazz kings in the era between the wars. The two men decided to create a book musical but had trouble coming up with a second act. When the Manhattan Theatre Club offered them a spot in its lineup, Maltby says, “we squeezed the content of a play into a revue.”

They held auditions, envisioning a cast of two or three. In walked McQueen. “You couldn’t imagine such a creature in your wildest dreams,” Maltby says. “This Kewpie doll with a fantastic soprano voice, exotic and wonderful.”

Half an hour later, Nell Carter showed up. “Trumpet voice. Sassy sense of humor. And yet she sang Noel Coward and I’ve never heard it sung more touchingly. We couldn’t choose, so we hired them both.”

McQueen and Carter were, says Maltby, “beautiful larger women and we thought, ‘Why not cast them against someone they could gang up on?’ So we hired this beautiful skinny girl named Irene Cara.”

The next epiphany: “We added two men, not three, so we could have five people, which gave us all kinds of pairings and triangles.”

Andre De Shields “was fast-talking and mercurial,” says Maltby. Ken Page’s size and demeanor reminded many of Waller. (“His sons came and when they saw Ken they started to cry,” McQueen recalls.)

Completing the ensemble would be Charlayne Woodard, who took Cara’s place when the show moved to Broadway, and Luther Henderson, who served as music director and Waller’s alter ego, the piano player.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” opened at the MTC in February 1978 and reopened on Broadway that May. In June, it won Tonys for best musical, director (Maltby) and featured actress (Carter). “Allow me to rave incontinently about the cast of five that works as nimbly and wickedly as five fingers in a piece of sleight of hand,” declared John Simon in New York magazine.

Dispensing with traditional devices such as slick production numbers or connect-the-dot plots, Maltby and company created a new kind of revue. They let the songs speak for themselves, often staging them as mini-plays-within-a-play.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” ran for 1,604 performances and spawned myriad revivals. Besides the Ahmanson gig, Maltby is directing a 30th-anniversary national tour that stars “American Idol’s” Ruben Studdard, Frenchie Davis and Trenyce Cobbins. “Even so,” he says, “L.A. is the definitive show. It has the full production, which a traveling show can’t, and this is where we will re-create that real contact we had with the audience.”

Maltby had not considered casting any of the original performers at the Ahmanson until McQueen called and told him she wanted in. “I knew no one could do it better,” he says.

Roz Ryan assumes the role originated by Carter, who died in 2003. Succeeding Page and DeShields are, respectively, Doug Eskew and Eugene Barry-Hill. Debra Walton plays what Maltby calls “the third woman -- always the youngest performer and a fresh face.”

In the original, each gesture and step was carefully considered by Maltby and Faria, an expert in historical dance. “It’s deceptive,” says Maltby. So much of the show seems free-flowing, even improvised. “But everything actually is as choreographed as ‘Swan Lake.’ ”

For McQueen, the first day of rehearsal felt like a family reunion. She saw old friends, put faces to names and embraced spirits from the past. “Ken. Andre. Charlayne. Nell. We all were like brothers and sisters.”

During the opening introductions, she happily announced: “I am Armelia McQueen, re-creating the role of Armelia McQueen.”

Three decades ago, she was a kid from Brooklyn with a few road shows under her belt. Today, she is a veteran L.A. actor who knows how rare it was to ride an obscure little show to the top and how rare it is to get a chance to play the same part so many years later.

“I want to re-create that sense of joy we had,” she says. “People sat in the theater and sang with us. If they had felt bad, they didn’t any longer because now they were tapping their toes. We were able to touch people, not because we were gurus, but because it came from all of our hearts. That’s what we need to recapture, especially in tough times like we have now.”

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‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ ’

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Call for exceptions.

Price: $20 to $100

Contact: (213) 628-2772