BY LEE WILLIAMS

Theater Under the Stars' inaugural production at their new home base, the Hobby Center, is based on a popular movie. Some Like It Hot follows the story from the great comedy starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. Writers Peter Stone, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill have put together a loose-limbed musical that works most of all because of director Dan Siretta's flashy performers -- they include a rather rickety Curtis recast as a natty, naughty old man.

The story takes us back to the gangster era of Chicago, 1929. Jerry (Timothy Gulan) and Joe (Arthur Hanket) are two out-of-work musicians who get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. To get out of town, they dress up like ugly women and join an all-girl band. Once they've climbed on board a train headed to Miami, they meet Sugar (Jodi Carmeli) and the rest of the crew and everyone falls in love.

This is old-styled, somewhat dusty humor. Much of it -- including all the jokes about Sugar's problems with alcohol and the running gag about men marrying men -- comes off as ridiculously dated. But the mostly older crowd at the Hobby Center didn't seem to mind, and the cast pulls off this material with a great deal of old-time pizzazz.

Heading up the energetic troupe of performers is Carmeli, who has managed to make the role of Sugar her very own. That's no easy task, considering the part was made famous by the indomitable Marilyn Monroe. Every bit her own style of bombshell, the curvy, blond Carmeli also can belt out a song that will knock you to the back of your seat. When she sings "People in My Life," her gorgeous voice swells and catches with all the big-hearted emotion any Broadway moment could ask for.

Gulan and Hanket don't have the distinctive energies that made the performances by Lemmon and Curtis so memorable on the big screen. But they seem to be having a great time on stage and are fun to watch, despite the material they're working with.

William Ryall as Spats, the tap-dancing gangster, heads up a large chorus of tappers, who inspired rousing rounds of applause. And Curtis is charming most of all because he's such a good sport about all the old-man jokes. The opening-night audience leaped to its feet when he stood in the middle of a chorus line of women who danced around him as he stomped about a bit, kicking up his heels here and there while grinning from ear to ear.... Curtis has such a winningly modest stage presence it's hard not to be won over.

... But anyone who loves big old-time musicals will enjoy these terrific performers. If it's story you're looking for, rent the film.

houstonpress.com