‘On the Twentieth Century’ Steams Ahead

The Colony has brought back “On the Twentieth Century” in high style--and just in time, too. This musical isn’t going to look any younger once the 21st century begins.

It must have seemed out of date, albeit intentionally so, even when it opened 20 years ago, for its creators matched the era in which it’s set--the ‘30s--with an earlier style of music: operetta.

Wise-guy, screwball-style lines and lyrics, written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and based on early-’30s material by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and Bruce Milholland, were juxtaposed with Cy Coleman’s swooping arias and fancy, repetitive choruses. The contrast between down-to-earth language and antique melody was supposed to add an extra layer of comedy.

Sometimes this works as planned, but it’s hard to extend the spoof over the entire evening. Occasionally the pomp and circumstance of the score weigh down the snappy, streamlined quality that one usually associates with ‘30s comedy--and with ‘30s trains, which is an apt reference, because most of the show is set aboard a train, the Twentieth Century, somewhere between Chicago and New York.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a better production than the Colony’s, staged by Todd Nielsen.

*

Lego Louis, who won an Ovation for his last role in a Cy Coleman musical (“City of Angels”) at the Colony, this time plays a scrappy and self-dramatizing theatrical producer, down on his luck, desperately angling for a comeback. Louis projects absolute authority as this damn-the-torpedoes personality. There were complaints about the only prior professional performance of this role in L.A. (Rock Hudson, 1979), so here’s a chance to see the character charging full speed ahead--and in the intimacy of a 99-seat venue.

Barbara Passolt is his match as his former lover and discovery, who has now become a vain but convincingly glamorous movie star. She wants to make her former benefactor grovel, though exactly why she feels this way is curiously unexplored in the text. Passolt is irresistibly funny, especially in her big flashback, as she transforms from a New Yawk-spouting accompanist into the star of a faux-French operetta.

Kurt Boesen and D. Ewing Woodruff are perfect ‘30s second bananas as the producer’s assistants. Patricia Cullen is all curdled sweetness as a prudish, eccentric heiress and potential theatrical angel. Dink O’Neal plays the movie star’s equally vain but clearly not as glamorous amour du jour.

A five-piece backstage band, led by Albert Potts III, keeps the score vibrant. Bradley Kaye’s potentially complicated train set expands and contracts without undue delay, and costumer Alex Jaeger (whose outfits for A Noise Within’s “Design for Living” were terrific) again demonstrates his keen affinity for ‘30s fashion.

* “On the Twentieth Century,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends July 12. $22-$27. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.