Crazy in love with "Crazy for You"

When the Gershwins delivered “Crazy for You” to Broadway in 1930, the show was titled “Girl Crazy.” The memorable songs had graced other Gershwin shows, were made famous by Astaire and Rogers, and have stood the test of time and then some. Think “Embraceable You,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” and much more.

Fast forward to 1992 when the original show hit Broadway as “Crazy for You” and ran for four years, winning every award known to man. A laff-riot performed at freight-train pace, the show does well on San Diego Musical Theatre’s postage stamp stage as witness the packed house—and on Super Bowl Sunday, yet. The cheering crowd included 93 touring high school choristers from Utah, who barely contained their enthusiasm.

Director Kirsten Chandler (you go, girl) terms the show “an old-fashioned musical about a boy, a girl and a theater that needs saving.” True, but the Gershwins’ sophistication also supplies topical one-liners from 1930, the onset of the Depression, about Freud, Stanislavsky, Russian emigrés, and anybody who can spare a dime. These, along with George’s great score backed by Ira’s witty lyrics, and a brace of killer performers, show why the musical is America’s gift to world theater.

The girl is Polly the Postmistress (the beguiling, dare we say spunky, Tayler Mettra) in hot, sleepy Deadrock, Nevada. The boy is stagestruck Bobby the Rich Banker’s son (the lithe, funny Jeffrey Scott Parsons), who fails an audition for B'way biggie Bela Zangler (the wonderful David McBean in a Ziegfeld send-up) and whose ambitious mom (the amusing Katie Gucik) urges him to go to Deadrock and seize a defaulted mortgage on a saloon and aging theater.

This gives Bobby a chance to escape Irene, his demanding fiancée (the dazzling Kelly DeRouin). Within seconds, Bobby falls for Polly and dreams up a way to save the old Gaiety Theater and breathe life into Deadrock. Enter Lank (the hilarious Edward Chamberlain), who owns both saloon and theater, has delusions of Parisian grandeur and seeks to foil Bobby.

The plot unfolds around a terrific supporting cast of seven adorable chorus girls whose long legs end somewhere in the middle of Route 66, and seven Deadrock cowpokes, who discover their latent musical talent after learning they’ll partner the chorus girls. Thus do New Yorkers learn how darling the hicks can be away out West.

Along the way, Chandler stages a hysterically funny turn for the two Zanglers—Bobby has disguised himself as Zangler when Polly thinks he’s just a mercenary Eastern banker, but le vrai Zangler has arrived in Deadrock determined to craft a hit show. This knee slapper brought down the house—if it weren’t for all the other show stoppers like “Tonight’s the Night,” which closes Act I and the finale on Deadrock’s main drag that ends the show.

Did we mention that choreographer Jill Gorrie gives new meaning to “tap dancing,” that set designers Dwight Odle and Mathys Herbert reinvent “ingenious,” that costumer Janet Pitcher gives us swell ’Thirties’ garb, that sound designer Kevin Anthenill crafted pitch perfect effects, and that the old pro, music director Don Le Master, led his 17 musicians to victory?

The show runs through March 3 at the Horton Grand. Run, don’t walk. Crazy for them.