Smooth Sailing for 'Dames at Sea'

It was a bad year — 1966. The U.S. had 250,000 troops in Vietnam and anti-war protesters were fired up across the country.

In response, writers George Haimsohn and Robin Miller and composer Jim Wise decided to put up a show to help people escape their troubles for a while. And to do it, they looked back to another dark time in American history: the 1930s. The result was Dames at Sea, a winking look at the extravagant movie musicals of the Depression. It was first produced at a small coffeehouse on a tiny stage in Greenwich Village (and starred a young Bernadette Peters) and then went on to thrive at small theaters across the country.

But this is the first time it's been on Broadway.

Director and choreographer Randy Skinner (42nd Street and Irving Berlin's White Christmas) doesn't take the show too seriously, which is a good thing. It's a cotton candy plot we've heard before: Girl from the sticks arrives on Broadway in the morning, joins the chorus of a show that's in rehearsal, and by the evening she becomes a star. But the cast of six is tremendous, and the focus stays squarely on the thundering tap dancing, where it belongs. Plus, there are some clever moments — the overture is accompanied by a black and white video of credit titles, as if we really were about to watch an old film.

Ruby, the girl who becomes a star when the lead gets ill, is played by Eloise Kropp, who has the sunny, earnest charisma (and the dimples) of an adult Shirley Temple. She falls for a sailor, the equally optimistic Cary Tedder, who wants to be a Broadway composer. His shipmate Lucky is played by Danny Gardner, who has the loose comic wackiness of the late Danny Kaye. There's also an aging diva (Lesli Margherita), a chorus girl with a heart of gold (Mara Davi, whose voice thrills) and a Navy captain (John Bolton, double cast as a director) who's also the diva's paramour.

The show isn't a dazzler, but it's a fun, family-friendly musical that will be a holiday season crowd-pleaser. You might just find yourself tap dancing home.