Holly Johnson

The touring show is in Portland through Sunday, and it's a lot of fun.

Based, of course, on the 1959 Billy Wilder classic comedy film of the same title, the hilarious story features two jazz musicians who witness the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago and are forced to disguise themselves as women in an all-girl traveling band. One falls in love with Sugar, the Marilyn Monroe character (delightfully portrayed by Jodi Carmelli). The other, in his female garb, is pursued by a tycoon.

What emblazons the show in your memory is not the forgettable though pleasant tunes of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (with additional lyrics by Joe Grey, Leo Wood and Sammy Cahn). Besides the farce, it's Gower Champion's original choreography and direction.

It's a giant tap show, and the clatter of tap shoes becomes the rat-tat-tat of machine guns as head gangster Spats -- here perfectly played, and beautifully danced, by the lanky William Ryall -- pursues Joe and Jerry, also known as Josephine and Daphne. In "Tear the Town Apart," sparks fly as Ryall and his henchmen tap up a storm.

Arthur Hanket as Joe and Timothy Gulan as Jerry are great as the leading fellas, funnymen to the core, yet dancers and singers who fall into the fast pace of the story with apparent ease. The film roles were played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, respectively, and here Curtis makes his musical stage debut as tycoon Osgood Fielding III, the role Joe E. Brown played in the movie.

Curtis, who has appeared in more than 120 films since 1949, talk-sings his way through his numbers, and is no dancer. Several times, he got the giggles during his lines, but his good-natured, glowing stage presence and association with the film were enough to satisfy the audience.

Some of the great original lines from the film script that Wilder co-wrote with I.A.L. Diamond: Joe and Jerry liken being thrown into close quarters with young women to "falling into a tub of whipped cream." They see Sugar's sexy walk as "like Jell-O on a string." And the nugget line of the play is when Jerry finally confesses to Osgood that he's not a girl after all, and the pat answer comes: "Nobody's perfect." The audience loved it.

Suzy Benzinger's fetching period costumes and the great scene pieces designed by James Leonard Joy started out in black and white when the story begins in Chicago. When the action moves to Miami, there's a burst of color in the girls' flapper clothes, the beach scenes, and a swell backdrop of the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, where the movie was filmed.

Holly Johnson: c/o The Oregonian A&E, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201.

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