STAGE WEST: "The Most Happy Fella" at North Coast Repertory Theatre

May and December: Lauren Weinberg and Gregory North in "The Most Happy Fella." Photo by Aaron Rumley

            In Jeffrey B. Moss’ director’s note in the North Coast Repertory Theatre program for its production of Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella” he references the show as “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen.”
            It hasn’t been produced locally in 20 years, not since Moonlight Stage Productions staged “The Most Happy Fella” in Vista. In fact, my “introduction” to this Golden Age musical was an old rerun of “I Love Lucy,” an episode from 1957 titled “Lucy Goes Out on the Town,” in which she, Ricky, Fred and Ethel went to a big Broadway show and it was – you guessed it – “The Most Happy Fella.”
            So Lucy and the gang saw it 50 years ago before I finally did.
            “The Most Happy Fella” is an old-fashioned musical, the kind that isn’t written or produced anymore. In spite of a couple of “goddamns” and an unplanned pregnancy in the narrative it’s a pretty foursquare story: Old guy -- make that old fella -- enchanted by the much younger server who waited on him in a San Francisco restaurant has left her a note that all but proposes marriage. Lo and behold, and perhaps because he’s substituted a photo of his handsome ranch foreman for his own, she turns up not long afterward at his Napa Valley grape farm. Everyone’s already calling her “the bride.”
            “The Most Happy Fella” is based on a play by Sidney Howard, “They Knew What They Wanted,” which later became a 1940 film of the same name starring Carole Lombard (as the young server) and Charles Laughton (as the aging wine grower). The movie does not have a happy ending.
            “Fella” is the third of Loesser’s Broadway musicals, premiering six years after his gangbusters hit “Guys and Dolls.” “The Most Happy Fella” is no “Guys and Dolls.” Its characters, besides Tony Esposito the grape farmer and waitress Amy, whom he has idealized as Rosabella (a device later exploited in “Man of La Mancha”), are mostly folks around the Napa ranch. Four of the hands, in fact, get to deliver “The Most Happy Fella’s” best known song, “Standing on the Corner.”
            As for the Loesser score, it’s a tuneful, serviceable one in which many of the gimmicky numbers, like the chefs’ acrobatic “Abbondanza,” the audience sing-along “Sposalizo” and the high-kickin’ ode to Dallas, Texas, “Big D,” are more memorable than the earnest ballads.
            But all this said, “The Most Happy Fella” is an entertaining 140 minutes (yeah, a little too long) of musical theater, comedy and romance, and the North Coast Rep production definitely benefits from having some unmistakably talented actors in the cast. Gregory North, playing Tony, has a big voice and is far more sympathetic than Charles Laughton was in the old movie. Tony’s loud and a little cranky but an old softie.
            If he’s cranky it’s probably because of his pushy sister Marie (Bethany Slomka in a very unsympathetic role) who’s determined not to allow a union between her brother and this young woman from San Francisco (that wicked city!).
            Lauren Weinberg, a vocal star in NC Rep’s past productions of “Camelot” and last year’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” is that young woman from San Francisco. I could listen to Weinberg sing all day; her voice is simply beautiful. I don’t feel like this musical gives her the best showcase, but she stands out nonetheless.
            The comic roles of Cleo, her waitress friend from The City (Shinah Hey) and Herman (Andrew Hey), the ranch hand who can’t help smiling, are more about their kissing courtship than the music, though they do have a tonna fun with “Big D.”
            I honestly didn’t know that the wistful tune “Joey, Joey, Joey” was from this show. Chris Hunter’s performance (as Joe the ranch foreman) of it is touching and sung with tremendous feeling.
            That aforementioned ensemble of folks ‘round the ranch (Jacob Caltrider, Eli Wood and Morgan Hollingsworth) truly enlivens “The Most Happy Fella” at times when it leans toward excess sentiment. Their antics and steps are choreographed by Melissa Glasgow.
            Alina Bokovikova has everyone clad in appropriate late-1920s rural duds, and in this staging of “The Most Happy Fella,” one conceived by Robert Page and approved by Loesser, the live music is provided by two pianists on either side of the stage – here, Elan McMahan and Justin Gray. This arrangement lends an intimacy to the show, which is largely sung-through anyway, and the effect is almost a concert performance of a stage musical. Nothing wrong with that in this case.
            If Loesser himself were around, I’d have two bones to pick with him: First, that he lets his characters refer to San Francisco as “Frisco.” Any San Franciscan will tell you that this is highly disrespectful. Second, if he really wanted older Tony to win the younger woman’s love and to do so unselfishly he’d have dropped his “Rosabella” infatuation and let her be the Amy she is. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but the “Rosabella” thing is almost infantilizing her and at the very least it emphasizes the difference in their ages rather than making the case that that difference doesn’t really matter if they’re in love.
            Loesser would counter with “Who’s got a Tony, a Grammy and a Pulitzer, wise guy, and what do you know about it?”
            He’d have a point.
            Well, to address director Moss’ observation about “everyone’s favorite musical they’ve never seen,” I’ll say this. Now I’ve seen “The Most Happy Fella,” and while it’s not my favorite musical it’s receiving a disarming staging at North Coast Repertory Theatre at which folks are very likely to walk out afterward happy.
            “The Most Happy Fella” runs through July 5 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.