On Theater:

IN ITS OWN WAY, the Fifties was at least as rotten as any other decade, what with McCarthyism, segregation, the Cold War, the universal conservatism and intolerance. But modern Fifties nostalgia, generated by people who were children back then, is a peculiar kind of tunnel vision that never notices such nastiness. America was complacent and happy, a superpower without a rival in any sphere, and the meaning of life could be easily fit into a popular song with room for doo-wops and a chorus. What a time it was. No wonder we can't seem to get enough of it.

Nite Club Confidential

Written, Directed, and Staged by Dennis Deal

At the Next Move Theatre

Nite Club Confidentialis a small, buoyant musical that proudly, nay, triumphantly takes its place at the breaking crest of the retroculture. It is a two-hour-long tribute to a vanished time that may never have existed, packed with period songs and pseudo-period original music, as well as more Fifties inconography than you can shake a De Soto tail-fin at.

The plot, such as it is, is utterly inconsequential, only an excuse to string 25 songs together in some kind of context. We swing through the Club High-Life to the Club Au-Revoir by way of "A Chic Club in Paris," all of which are represented by a few tables and chairs set up in front of the lacquered stage of the Next Move Theater. We have the again chantuese "who during the Eisenhower Administration never once saw daylight," the young star, the happy go lucky group of kids who are down on their luck but gotta lot of heart, and best of all, the cynical, street-wise, cliche-spouting Bogart-clone, Buck Holden, who smokes a cigarette like it's part of his lip. Imagine--in those days they didn't even know about emphysema.

But this is a show about music, not a play at all but a reverent tribute to the Harold Arlens and Johnny Mercers who provided the soundtrack for the decade. Along with some terrific renditions of a few standards, like "That Old Black magic" and "Goody-Goody," writer-director Dennis Deal has, along with Albert Evans, come up with an array of new songs that lyrically and musically conjure up the period, beginning with the opening number, "Nite-Club:"

Hey, driver, step on the gas

Hey, driver, slow down:

There's a neon martini glass.

There's token rock and roll number, and one hilarious swipe at the last gasp of the Golden Age of Hollywood, as Buck and his singing group, the High Hopes, don spangled over-alls for "Put the Blame on Mamie (She Painted the White House Pink)" from the smash film that should've been, The Mamie Eisenhower Story.But the show never strays too far from its home, the nite-club, where "Song-stylists" moan torch songs and members of a capella groups strive, in the true spirit of the age, to be utterly indistinguishable from each other.

THE CAST is superb, bouncing through the material with energy and humor. Laura Kenyon is convincingly haggard as the aging Kay Goodman, and she is beautifully counterbalanced by Krista Neuman as the ingenue Dorothy Flynn, who goes from boring broad to blond bombshell the instant she takes off her rhinestone glasses with pointy rims. Of course. And in the lead role of Buck, Scott Bakula chews on the endless cliches with a masculine earnestness that brings to mind Montgomery Clift, Victor Mature, and that prime-rib of cynical beefcake, William Holden.

Occasionally, the earnest musical-comedy style of the singing and dancing threatens to overwhelm the material, and a purist friend tells me that the house pianist was way off throughout. So, purists take note. For the rest of us it's a cast of dreamboats and high-power honeys singin' the kind of songs that heaven sings when its feelin' blue. So to speak.

But the name to circle on the program is Lindsay W. Davis '75 (class year proudly added) who is responsible for the sets and costumes. It seems as if the actors leap off-stage every 40 seconds, returning with a new costume even more hilariously appropriate than the last. Sharkskin jackets with velvet collars, peg-leg pants with built-in bicycle clips, skirts floating on clouds of crinoline, striped loafers and white bucks, strapless cocktail dresses revealing white powdered shoulders. The hats along bring a lump to the throat.

The set, although not able to change every scene, is equally inventive. In addition to the lacquered, stepped "nite-club" stage, it features a side area covered by a huge venetian blind, which any self-respecting femme-fatale would give her feather boa to be seen through, holding a smoking revolver in her arm-length velvet glove. Aided by Greg Sullivan's lighting, director Deal stages images that always seem eerily appropriate, as if we all carried around the Judy Garland version of A Star is Born like a race-memory.

Images, musical and visual, are the heart of this production; it's like an animated museum of a legendary past. Although it thankfully stays away from the teenage-oriented material of every nostalgia film form American Graffiti to Peggy Sue Got Married, it still treats its adult subjects with a childish joy, playing with baubles of memory like brightly colored toys. One might be left with an unsatisfied desire to know more about the denizens of the Fifties--our parents and teachers--than just their taste in clothing. To be fair, Nite Club confidential never pretends to be more than what it is, an affectionate and gently satirical tribute to a style of music and musical culture. As a musical revue, it's a success, supported by excellent performances and witty and inventive staging. But still, one wishes that American culture would stop growing backwards and start growing up.