‘Enchanted Evening’ is show tunes at their finest

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

It begins with five singer-actors warming up ­­— racing through scales and testing random snatches of songs in their dressing room or in the wings — as performers invariably do before curtain time.

As they do so, each singer in Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre’s new revue “Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein” also checks in with Austin Cook, their piano accompanist and the show’s exceptional music director. The lanky, sweet-faced 24-year-old’s superb playing on a sleek white baby grand and his ingenious and often surprising arrangements of the show’s more than three dozen songs mark him as a big talent to watch. (He also can sing.)

Of course, the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook is the most familiar of all Broadway catalogs, filled with songs whose range and level of melodic beauty, as well as accessibility, remain unmatched. If ever there were a pair emblematic of “the greatest generation” and its values, R & H would be it.

The songs chosen for this revue, directed by Fred Anzevino and choreographed by Ben Mason, are largely familiar. They are drawn from megahits such as “Oklahoma!,” “South Pacific,” “Carousel,” “The Sound of Music,” “The King and I” and “Flower Drum Song” — a list that easily suggests the worldliness of these masters’ outlook. But many of them are presented with an unusual twist that takes them beyond their purpose in the original musical. And a few lovely songs from lesser-known shows (“Allegro” and “Pipe Dream”) are an added treat.

In one way or another, the focus of the revue is on romance in all its many guises. There also are a couple of solid reminders of how Rodgers and Hammerstein could write little self-contained dramas, whether in the form of that soon-to-be-a-dad “Soliloquy” from “Carousel” (sung by the rich-voiced Jeremy Trager) or the marvelously timely “A Puzzlement” from “The King and I,” in which a national leader muses on policymaking and change (it is expertly rendered here by two men — Trager and Evan Tyrone Martin).

Cook has deftly tailored some of the songs to the particular talents of the singers, with Danni Smith, a tall, shapely brunette, displaying a marvelously jazzy flair and turning “Something Wonderful” (from “The King and I”) into a powerhouse torch song. She also brings a palpable ache to “Love, Look Away” (from “Flower Drum Song”) and a sharply edgy anger to “The Gentleman Is a Dope” (from “Allegro”),

Sara Shoch uses her soaring soprano to lovely effect in “It Might as Well Be Spring” (from “State Fair”) and “Out of My Dream” (“Oklahoma!”). She also brings her defiant belt to “I’m in Love With a Wonderful Guy” (“South Pacific”). And the ever confident Dana Tretta easily taps into the pure spunk of “I Can’t Say No” (“Oklahoma!”) and “A Cockeyed Optimist” (“Soth Pacific”), while refreshingly stripping all the saccharine wistfulness from “In My Own Little Corner ‘ (“from “Cinderella”). Schoch and Trett also pair ideally to turn “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” (from “The Sound of Music”) into a charming mother-daughter advice session.

Martin, a tall, boyish beanpole who could pass for a young Barack Obama, sings the haunting “Everybody’s Got a Home but Me” (from “Pipe Dream”) and comes into his own in the second act, teaming with Tretta for a hilarious duet, “Don’t Marry Me” (from “Flower Drum Song”), and a sweetly affecting “Younger Than Springtime” (from “South Pacific”).

The actors here are not great dancers, and the show would greatly benefit from more polished costumes that would flatter the cast’s very different body types. But more often than not, the evening is “enchanted.”