On Your Toes

August 14, 2007
Reprise, UCLA's Freud Theatre
Musical, we went with Rachel
Rodgers & Hart

Starring: Jeffrey Denman, Beth Malone, Dan Butler, Stephanie Powers, Yvette Tucker, Brett Ryback and Jonathan Sharp.

I sometimes get bored with musicals that have as much dance as singing, but this choreography was highly entertaining, as were the very talented dancers. It's always nice seeing dancers who are gifted & solid character actors (Yvette Tucker and Jonathan Sharp, pictured above). And we were surprised to learn that Stefanie Powers has some pipes! Brett Ryback is clearly multi-talented and has a great voice and appealing stage presence. We'd love to see him take a lead in something. We thoroughly enjoyed lead Jeffry Denman, a triple-threat... great voice, quirky, funny, and he's as good a dancer as we've seen on The Great White Way.

The plot... a music professor's aspiration to help his student write a non-traditional jazz ballet for the Russian ballet collides with the highly tempermental Maestro (Butler, who played Bulldog on "Frasier") and his prima-donna leads (Tucker & Sharp). There's romance (with Beth Malone whom we enjoyed in "Sister Act") and just enough plot to string the songs together. They lyrics were brilliant. It's a very charming musical, and it was great to see Reprise bring it out and remind us. This musical is still fresh enough to entertain modern theatre audiences.

Notable songs: "There's a Small Hotel," "You Took Advantage of Me," "The Heart is Quicker Than the Eye" and "On Your Toes."

And we laughed out loud when Stefanie uttered the words "heart to heart" (Hart to Hart), and when Dan Butler, as Maestro of the Ballet proclaimed "I am The Decider." Another fun evening at Reprise!