From farmgirl to showgirl

Barry Manilow's fun-loving Copacabana

by Bill Rodriguez

COPACABANA. Music by Barry Manilow, lyrics by Bruce Sussman & Jack Feldman, book by Barry Manilow, Jack Feldman & Bruce Sussman. Directed by David Warren. With Franc D'Ambrosio, Darcie Roberts, Terry Burrell, Philip Hernandez. At Providence Performing Arts Center through December 3.

Copacabana may very well have started out as a ribald haiku, but whatever padding and transforming has turned it into the current touring production is a credit to creativity by committee. Sure it's a time-worn story, sure it's frothier than a champagne bubble bath, but the musical at the Providence Performing Arts Center is a non-stop roller-coaster ride of song-and-dance showmanship.

The story of its development is even more unlikely than the farmgirl-to-showgirl tale it tells. Its full billing is Barry Manilow's Copacabana, to remind prospective ticket-buyers that he wrote the title song -- an abbreviated version begins and ends the show --for a 1978 album. The tune rocketed up the charts and won the songwriter his first Grammy, and a few years later its slim narrative was adapted into a TV movie for CBS. The momentum didn't flag, and soon the film story was adapted for a 75-minute Las Vegas-style revue (actually Atlantic City, at Caesar's Resorts). Could a full-length stage musical be far behind? Songs and characters were added and by the early '80s it ran for a couple of seasons in London's West End. Since then it has done well enough on tour to not have to risk the big-bucks gamble of Broadway and the furrow-browed New York critics.

The 1947 nightclub/gangster story is framed by partial renditions of "Copacabana," as composer (Franc D'Ambrosio) struggles to create the music and narrative about showgirl Lola, jealous boyfriend Tony and mobster Rico. (It's a good thing the entire Manilow ditty is never sung, even in the little post-curtain-call production number, since it ends with Lola as a drunken, middle-aged madwoman, with "faded feathers in her hair.") The show takes place in the composer's fervid, albeit not very original, imagination.

Fortunately, the fun is in the song and dance, because the action is a pastiche of backstage-musical cliches. Lola (Darcie Roberts) is an aw-shucks hayseed from Tulsa, fresh off the bus in Grand Central Station determined to become a Copacabana chorus girl. At the nightclub she is befriended by shopworn and sassy ex-showgirl Gladys (Beth McVey), who is now a cigarette girl. She's also befriended by Brooklynite bartender and musician Tony Forte (D'Ambrosio), after her obligatory bad first impression of him. Club manager Sam (Dale Radunz) starts out as a grump, checking his watch and ulcer at every exit, but by act two proves to be a pussycat, of course.

Vulpine rather than feline is Rico Castelli (Philip Hernandez), the gangster owner of the famed Tropicana in Havana. He takes a liking to chorus girl Lola, to the heated dismay of his current, but aging, leading lady Conchita Alvarez (Terry Burrell). Rico drugs Lola's Dom Perignon and flies her to Havana, where she awakens two days later a prisoner -- but a headliner -- rehearsing for the next Tropicana show. Needless to say, Tony arrives in the nick of time, etc.

Don't worry -- it's all in the how, not the what. The production values on display are equal to the best Big White Way touring shows. Costumes, designed by David C. Woolard, are as glam-packed and glitzy as you'd expect. One of my favorite dance numbers, "Dancin' Fool," has an all-male troupe hoofing to a snazzy swing routine that would reduce lesser dancers to a tangled heap. The choreography by Wayne Cilento hits the ground running, snappy and polished, full of gymnastic leaps and poses. Varied, too. One of the virtues of backstage musicals is that whenever the action ebbs, it can be time for a colorful production number with an exotic setting. So we get a steamy tango, "Bolero de Amor" for Rico's seduction scene, and a rollicking pirate musical-within-a-musical, "El Bravo," when it's time for Tony to come to the rescue. The Vegas esthetic comes into play most entertainingly in "Sweet Heaven," with the chorus girls wearing zodiac headgear that lights up.

The voices of the leads certainly are Broadway-worthy, as they display in both solos and duets. Roberts has talent as a comedienne as well and isn't afraid to be gawky for a laugh, as when Lola awkwardly climbs onto upright pianos to look sexy during auditions. D'Ambrosio has a hard time maintaining the sweet-sap character he's supposed to be, slipping out of his dems and dose Brooklynese as often as he slips into it. They both can hoof up a storm, unlike many a musical lead who can barely shuffle and time-step.

Copacabana is not a character-oriented musical and it never aspired to be. It simply is a lot of fun.