Terrific Fun and Not Exactly Work

This is a new musical designed to look like an old musical; the 1927 kind. That means it’s full of characters with names like Duke and Billie and Cookie and Jimmy; the sets — the bedroom, front lawn, dining room and living room — are all described as “ritzy,” and they are; and the plot involving bootleggers, masses of fast-tapping “cheap chorus girls,” masses of black-suited  members of the vice squad, a duchess, a feckless scion and a world famous interpreter of modern dance is vapor thin. But any 1920s-style musical  leaning on the Gershwin brothers, inspired by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton and staged in a house like the Warner Theatre with a big orchestra and an accomplished tuba player like Matt Albert just can’t miss.

Of course those cheap chorus girls (Jimmy apologizes for calling them cheap) in the opening with their scanty, wildly swinging red sequins and fast, cute moves don’t hurt either.

This little pasted-together extravagance started life with another name, “They All Laughed,” in 2001; got dropped; was workshopped in 2007 with Harry Connick Jr.; was postponed; then reemerged in 2012 on Broadway with the mighty Matthew Broderick who played Jimmy the heir. He can make anything work. So ”Nice Work If You Can Get It” ran for a little more than a year and then went on tour.

The plot opens with Billie (Marcia Maslo) and her accomplices stashing bathtub gin in the basement of Jimmy’s (Rick Fountain) extravagant, 47-room Long Island beach house. Jimmy is about to marry Eileen (Christiane Olson) the dancer, who claims this will be the first time she has ever been touched; “Really?” someone asks; “Well, give or take,” Eileen replies. This will be Jimmy’s fourth wedding we are told, and again, we get another terrific dance number. We also get in a song, the one in the show’s title.

In following scenes, police pursue the hooch gang; Jimmy and Eileen do not get married; more dance, more clever staging; more songs; some gunfire; Jeannie Muldoon (Jean-Marie McGrath)  gives up her dream of becoming the queen of England; Duchess Estonia (Lana Peck), a teetotaller, discovers the delights of gin; a bunch of political jokes follows such as the quip delivered when Max Evergreen (Dan Divirgilio), seeking an occupation, is told that with his “limited intellectual capacity he has no choice  but to enter politics,” and, you will be pleased to know, everyone ends up with the right mate, a lot of Gershwin songs get sung and the cheap chorus girls give us a big, lusty finish put together by director/choreographer Sheila Waters Fucci. “Nice Work” is long. But it’s a lot of fun.

“Nice Work If You Can Get It” runs at the Warner Theatre in Torrington, CT, through Nov. 15. For tickets, call 860-489-7180 or go to www.warnertheatre.org.