STEVE COHEN

Do you have memories of the 1960 movie Can-Can (co-starring Frank Sinatra, Louis Jourdan and Shirley MacLaine)?

Wipe them from your mind. This revival of the stage version is a quite different experience, and is far superior. What was insipid on film is exciting in the flesh. The script is sharper and the fine Cole Porter score is restored (the film omitted much of it) and is superbly sung.

Can-Can had one Broadway revival in 1981 which folded in two weeks, and decades have passed with the public unable to see the complete show.

Few people are around who can remember the original stage musical of 1953. I'm here to tell you that this Paper Mill production is better than that one, too. The original version had elegant dancing but a creaky plot and some stale jokes; the new version has great dancing, a better cast and far more audience appeal. I was unmoved by the original, in part because I was an adolescent with insufficient appreciation of the Parisian milieu which inspired Porter.

The show centers on the leading lady and Kate Baldwin is a superb Pistache, the owner of a nightclub which features scandalous dancing. Baldwin is known to audiences for sweet innocent roles like Sharon in Finian's Rainbow, Amalia in She Loves Me and Eliza in My Fair Lady. Here Baldwin's a woman of the world and she makes the transition compellingly. What's more, she sings the role better than her predecessors. (The originator was Lilo, a charming French singer whose accent obscured many of the lyrics. The producers of the movie had so little confidence in MacLaine's singing that they took the show's best-known song, "I Love Paris," away from her and assigned it to a choral group. I did not see a 1988 production in London that starred Donna McKechnie and ran two months.)

Here are additional reasons why this production could make it to Broadway and be successful there:

– The leading man. Jason Daniely is in peak vocal form as the Parisian magistrate who tries to shut down Pistache's club and falls in love with her. He is far superior to the originator, Peter Cookson, and to Jourdan who had the part in the film.

– The supporting cast. Although the plot centers on Pistache and the magistrate, a plethora of colorful supporting players add to the entertainment. The featured cast members are wonderful, including Michael Berresse as a newspaper critic and womanizer; Michael Kostroff as Jean-Louis, the club's emcee; Greg Hildreth as Boris, a struggling sculptor; Megan Sikora as Claudine, one of the dancers and Boris's wife; Mark Price as the poet friend of Boris; and Justin Robertson as Étienne, another Bohemian. All of them have shining moments in the spotlight.

– An improved book. Joel Fields and David Lee have kept the 1890s period and the Abe Burrows narrative and added a back-story for Pistache and the magistrate plus considerable repartee between the nighclub's emcee and the theater audience. This involvement with audience members is clever and appealing.

– The music. This is a golden-age show where the songs are the raison d'être for the enterprise. "I Love Paris,""C'est Magnifique,""Allez-Vous-En,""I Am in Love" and "It's All Right With Me" are standards that deserve their classic stature. (How many recent shows have five memorable songs?) All the orginal score is here and no extraneous numbers have been dragged in from other musicals.

– The lyrics. This must be considered an asset apart from the music, because Porter's sophisticated language and intricate rhymes are a treasure unmatched in the history of American musical theater.

– Choreography. Flashy Parisienne dancing is staged with panache by Patti Colombo. Leaps and flips abound, plus the signature can-can, which gets more prominent placement than it did in 1953.

– Different standards. When new, Can-Can was compared with Porter's own Kiss Me, Kate and Out of This World, plus new shows by Rodgers & Hammerstein. Now there's less competition. There's not going to be anything else by Porter, so his gifts are especially welcome.

A reminder: The can-can was notorious for displaying stockinged thighs but there was, and is, no nudity; so this show is good family entertainment.

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