R&H block A semi-enchanted evening in Gloucester BY CAROLYN CLAY

I don’t know that it’s a grand night for singing in Gloucester, where former Broadway in Boston president Tony McLean has marshaled five sturdy sets of tonsils for the Rodgers & Hammerstein compilation A Grand Night for Singing (at Gloucester Stage Company through June 26). But it’s a pretty good night for singing some pretty grand songs by the pioneering duo who drove their musical surrey from Oklahoma to the South Pacific. This Tony-nominated revue of tunes from R&H shows both iconic and obscure was conceived by director Walter Bobbie and first performed in 1993. And as filled with melodic warhorses as it is, it does saddle some with new meaning. "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" is asked not by an exasperated mother abbess but by a perplexed young man in love. Indeed, love in its many permutations is the now-melancholy, now-giddy glue holding the enterprise together.

McLean has devised a simple, fluid staging in which his quintet drifts, sometimes solo or in pairs, sometimes in circles, occasionally in full ballroom or vaudeville mode, on a star-doodled stage before a white lattice-work pavilion housing a six-man band sprightly led by musical director Michael Kreutz. Although McLean sometimes resorts to movement cliché, he takes advantage of the intimate space, offering sincere singers making little effort to sell a song. And even if one occasionally yearns for a full-out Robert Goulet moment, it’s pleasant to hear the natural voice — or voices — in the service of Rodgers’s oft-ravishing tunes.

Of the singers, first among equals is Maureen Brennan, a 1974 Tony nominee for her Cunegonde in Candide who now lives in Stoneham. She has the roundest, most operatic tone, and she applies it to lustrous renditions of "If I Loved You" (Carousel) and "Something Wonderful" (The King and I) and a jumpy, then swooning "It Might As Well Be Spring" (State Fair). And she looks as pert as her younger counterparts, the most personable of whom is Sarah Corey, who brings edge and heartache to "The Gentleman Is a Dope" (Allegro) and makes a joyous exhibition of a mousy character’s on-stage transformation in "It’s Me" (Me and Juliet).

Brendan McNab puts across "Honey Bun" (South Pacific) with Al Jolsonian panache but delivers the regret-laden "This Nearly Was Mine" (also South Pacific) with affecting piquancy. Kristen Vail is the lilting blonde ingénue, her diction as crisp as her look. She’s paired a lot with Boston Conservatory student Luke Hawkins, who’s the most tentative singer but gets to burn up the floor with his taps on "Kansas City" (Oklahoma!). More interesting are the pairings of songs, as when Corey’s "I Cain’t Say No" (Oklahoma!) is followed head-over-heels by Vail’s "A Wonderful Guy" (South Pacific).

Ironies, however, abound. As the president of Broadway in Boston, McLean brought us Fiona Shaw in Medea and Sir Peter Hall’s As You Like It. His presence was missed last week when Drew Murphy, now head of the Clear Channel Entertainment division that operates the Opera House and the Colonial and Wilbur Theatres, announced a 2005–2006 season devoid of such highbrow pickings. The season promises just one play, the stage adaptation of Mitch Albom’s inspirational book Tuesdays with Morrie, and most of the promised musicals are retreads. The year will bring Wicked and Little Women — The Musical, both new to Boston, along with a pre-Broadway engagement of Martin Short: If I’d Saved, I Wouldn’t Be Here, which the star describes as "a satiric look at every one-man show that’s ever existed." And there are brief touchdowns by mega-magician David Copperfield and Matthew Bourne with his gender-bent 1995 reinvention of Swan Lake. But we’ll also see the umpteenth comings of Annie, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Hairspray, and Les Mis. McLean may have gone into the old-musical business himself, but at least with Rodgers & Hammerstein he’s selling the best.