Bullets Over Broadway

For those who never got bitten by the musical-theater bug, people suddenly breaking into song isn't transforming, merely ridiculous. But for dedicated theater queens, no film or TV show can match hearing an orchestra as the curtain rises on a splashy opening production number.

"Bullets Over Broadway" has a humdinger of a curtain raiser: Nick Cordero, in striped suit and fedora, jumps out and machine guns the lights announcing the show's title.

Immediately, we're immersed in the milieu that Woody Allen so brilliantly captured in the original 1994 movie: the speakeasies and glittering lights of Broadway during Prohibition.

A bevy of feline-clad chorus girls have just finished their cat-themed number when we meet Olive, an actress-wannabe. She's hounding her mob-boss boyfriend to make good on a promise to bankroll the play that will make her a star.

Olive's first scat number is cute, but Hel�ne Yorke way overplays the screechy voice, limited intellect and Jersey accent. In two other movies, "Radio Days" and "Broadway Danny Rose," Woody Allen cast Mia Farrow (before they descended into tabloid fodder) in similar roles, as if to show, "See, properly done even the most cerebral actress can do it."

Olive, however, is reduced to a caricature and stays there. That works if, like another high-pitched on-talent actress, Lina Lamont, she's in a vehicle as sublimely conceived and directed as "Singing in the Rain."

"Singing in the Rain," along with another MGM classic, "The Bandwagon" and "My One and Only" should have been used as templates for how to adapt the Great American Songbook to a period musical. Instead, "Bullets" squanders songs that don't further the plot or deepen the characters. In fact, they stop the action cold.

The very next scene presents a sharp contrast to the glamor of a New York speakeasy: the rooftop of a a Greenwich Village tenement, where the girlfriend of a playwright who misinterprets high-flown agitprop dialogue for artistic genius patiently waits for him to come to his senses so they can be boring in Pittsburgh, a city that probably doesn't want to be the butt of so many jokes about rubes. When she breaks into song, there's no orchestral build-up or even motivation.

I can't blame Betsy Wolfe for a one-dimensional performance as the girlfriend, since she wasn't given much to work with. Zach Braff, on the other hand, has a good singing voice but doesn't work as a leading man. Even if he's playing David Shayne, the playwright -- Sean Hayes and Daniel Radcliffe, in "Promises, Promises" and "How to Succeed in Business," respectively, showed that a schlub can double as a romantic lead.

Marin Mazzie and Cordero were faced with the daunting challenge of being compared to Dianne Wiest and Chazz Palminteri in the film. Wiest won her second Oscar for an Allen film playing the fading theatrical diva whose signature line "Don't speak" became an instant catch phrase. The only reason why Palminteri didn't get his Oscar is because Academy voters decided to bestow one of those cumulative career Oscars on Martin Landau.

Cordero, a tall drink of water, gives a great performance as a gangster. But we don't get the the underlying sensitivity of a naive genius who transforms Shayne's left-wing dreck into kitchen-sink realism. Why Mazzie decided to counter Wiest by channeling of Faye Dunaway-as-Joan Crawford is anybody's guess.

Certainly, the overall leaden book doesn't help. Nor does a coarsening of the jokes that make direct references to blow jobs and substitutes swear words for subtle wit.

It's not only the song choices and placement that are jarring. "Let's Misbehave," "Running Wild" and "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness if I Do" are great songs that don't deserve to run out of spark from the overuse they're subjected to here.

The nightclub chorus acts as a Greek chorus, but it's the chorus of gangsters that get the really flashy choreography, complete with the acrobatics that have become de rigueur in splashy musicals. The model for both comes straight out of "Guys and Dolls," where they are integral to the action, not add-ons.

Similarly, Olive's set piece in which she suddenly decides to recreate a burlesque double entendre about big, thick hot dogs, is a direct lift from "Too Darn Hot" in "Kiss Me, Kate," which also just happens to feature two amiable thugs who get the theater bug.

If you're going to reference musicals like these, you'd better have a new take on them. Susan Stroman's choreography is mostly boiler plate stuff that winks at the period dances like the Charleston. It's understandable why Stroman, after a couple of not-so-successful shows, would revert back to her greatest success as a director. But what worked beautifully in "The Producers" comes off here as schtick.

The sets and costumes are first rate. That said, I hated Olive's Louise Brooks blonde bob that looks more like a sculpted bathing cap. And, at this point, throwing men as dancing hot dogs into a burlesque number is more over-the-hill than over-the-top.

Interestingly, it's the secondary performers who mostly work. Nick Valenti of "The Sopranos" as the mob boss; and Lenny Wolpe, as Sharpe's theatrical agent, bring experience and gravitas. I loved Brooks Ashmanskas as a food-addicted actor, although Olive must be a chubby chaser to bed this ham. (Would it be too churlish to criticize the personality-free Pomeranian thrown in for a guaranteed "Awww" from the audience?")

The recent revival of "Anything Goes" showed how a 1920s play can still work, even when saddled with a ridiculous plot, hoary jokes and over-familiar songs. "Bullets" may do the same for those who haven't seen the film. A few empty seats after intermission aside, the audience the night I saw it loved it.

If they can immerse themselves for one night in the undeniable and unique magic of a sumptuous Broadway musical, more power to them.

"Bullets Over Broadway" runs through Aug. 24 at the St. James Theater, 246 W. 44th St., west of Times Square. For tickets or information, call 212-239-6200 or go to the Telecharge website.