For those that missed the five-performance run of "I Love a Piano" at the Spreckels Theatre in April, Escondido's Welk Resort Theatre is currently presenting a first-rate staging of the Irving Berlin revue. With a catalogue of over 1,000 Berlin songs to choose from, "I Love a Piano" is one of the more clever, quality revues out there, and in director and choreographer Sha Newman's staging, the six-person show feels much more at home in the Welk's intimate space than in the expansive Spreckels.

Chris Fore and Sarah Bermudez

Copyright©2008 Marc Northover

Creators Ray Roderick and Michael Berkeley have fashioned a swiftly moving evening of almost 60 Berlin songs around a rather gimmicky centerpiece: in this case, an upright piano with a broken key (an oft-used middle-octave key, at that, which begs the question, "Didn't anyone ever get that thing fixed...?!"). Said set of ivories is supposedly transported over the decades through various locales representing Berlin's America -- a music shop and parlor in the 1910s, a Roaring Twenties speakeasy, a Depression-era "Hooverville" slum straight out of "Annie," a marathon dance competition, the requisite Stage Door Canteen of the War Years, and a postwar summer stock theatre of the Fifties.

It's a showcase for the six performers, and the costume designer (in this case, Carlotta Malone), as much as it is for Berlin's instantly hummable tunes. A treasure of our local stages, Sarah Bermudez makes quite an entrance dressed in Ms. Malone's Titanic-period gown -- period, though the ostensibly wholesome character's hot pink gown and display of feathers border on harlotry. Actually, all three of the women's opening costumes, with their garish hues set against the drab greys of the gentlemen, seem determined to keep even the most somnabulent of Welk patrons awake.

Ms. Bermudez, she of the frequently dazzling soprano, shows a different side to her voice right from the start with a strong, belty rendition of the early Berlin charmer, "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy." Later, she again breaks out of her typically placid, non-dancing roles by setting her blue-and-pink flapper fringe flying in the speakeasy scene, and partnering up with superb dancer Chris Fore for a jazzy Gene-and-Judy type dance number straight out of "Summer Stock."

Mr. Fore has the audience chuckling during a brief silent movie sequence in which he gives us his best Chaplin. One would think he would be breathless by the end of these frequently athletic shenanigans, but the show's assemblers unforgivingly have him launch right into a challenging legato duet with Ms. Bermudez on the Berlin classic, "Blue Skies." As if that weren't enough, the indefatigable Mr. Fore follows that right up with yet another strong solo in "All By Myself."

At the performance attended, Mr. Fore seemed to have trouble holding on to his never-ending array of props, as glasses, hats, and canes alike all escaped his grasp at one point or another. The way he carries his upper body, though, even with the errant cane rolling around on the ground out of reach, points to a solid knowledge of Astaire style.

Michael Dotson and Christia Mantzke

Copyright©2008 Marc Northover

Speaking of Astaire, Michael Dotson and Christia Mantzke have that Fred-and-Ginger grace to balance out the athleticism of the younger pair's Gene-and-Judy. Ms. Mantzke also stands out with the infectious "Let Yourself Go," and Mr. Dotson displays a solid baritone in Act Two as he sings his way through Frank Butler in the "Annie Get Your Gun" scene.

As the male half of the show's older couple, Don Lucas is all showbiz know-how with a couple of numbers seen on the Welk stage last year in Berlin's "White Christmas." His sensitive "Count Your Blessing Instead of Sheep" gives way to the quirky march of "What Do You Do With a General" in Act Two.

It's Roberta Wall as the grande dame of the cast roster that has the biggest transformation through the course of the show. Though she's saddled with the despondent "Russian Lullaby" (with requisite headscarf), not to mention the most unflattering sequined gown to appear on the Welk stage in recent memory, a campy Statue of Liberty get-up (still later in the first act), and the incongruity of singing "Suppertime" (why would a bejeweled white woman sing of having her children pray "at their humble board"?), in Act Two she and her bombastic belt are finally allowed to take center stage. Seeing Ms. Wall go toe to toe with the other two would-be Annie Oakleys is a little reminiscent of watching Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand deferentially sing backup to Ethel Merman in those 1960s television specials.

Don Lucas and Roberta Wall

Copyright©2008 Marc Northover

Mike Buckley's attractive set includes two small turntables that efficiently shift the scene from decade to decade, and though the neon blue stairs that light up during Ms. Bermudez's touching "What'll I Do" might be overkill, the Jazz Age fire escape shafts are just one feature of Jennifer Edwards-Northover's expert lighting design. Resident musical director Justin Gray leads a four-piece combo.

Coming as it does on the heels of the Welk's more youth-oriented "Altar Boyz," "I Love a Piano" may be one way the theatre hopes to lure back its typical audience of daytrippers and vacationers. It's certainly a creative way of filling up holes in its season that might otherwise have gone to yet another overdone Rodgers and Hammerstein staple. Let us hope that future Welk revues have the charm and clever construction that Messrs. Roderick and Berkeley -- and Ms. Newman and cast -- have given us with Irving Berlin's "I Love a Piano."

VIEW PROGRAM HERE (PDF)