The Arizona Republic

 

Millie' is thoroughly charming

 

Sept. 17, 2006 12:00 AM

 

Thoroughly Modern Millie so perfectly re-creates the feel of a classic musical that it's hard to believe it's only a few years old. This Roaring '20s fairy tale is the anti-Chicago, combining innocent romance and comic-book melodrama into one big ball of cotton-candy nostalgia.

 

In its season opener, Phoenix Theatre lavishes plenty of love on this sweet tale of a Kansas girl who moves to the Big Apple to chase her American Dream (in this case, landing a rich husband). The flapper dresses are gorgeous, the dances are charming and the Jazz Age scenery pops out all over the stage.

 

Most important, this production has a magnificent Millie in Natalie Ellis, with the perfect mix of wide-eyed charm and sexy ambition, and pipes that demand applause. She gets strong support from Kaitlynn Kleinman as the even-more-innocent Dorothy Brown, in her pink dress and blond curls, and Terey Summers as the nefarious Mrs. Meers, the faux-Chinese hotelier whose real career is selling girls into white slavery.

 

 

That subplot earns most of the laughs, thanks to such clever touches as Mrs. Meers' Buddha phone (rub his belly to call the bad guys). However, director Michael Barnard doesn't get as much mileage from the workplace comedy: Gina Handy only squeezes a few chuckles out of her role as the uptight office maven, and Andrew Ragone is downright annoying as Millie's boss. There's more than enough vibrato in the singing, thank you - Ragone's overly sonorous delivery is intended to make the character seem supercilious, but it only makes him ridiculous, particularly when he's delivering such colloquial lines as, "Tha-a-at's using the old be-e-ean!"

 

On the musical side, one might ask for a little more flash from the tap dancing, but for the most part the production delivers the goods, with confident singing and well-timed choreography on the big group numbers.

 

Like Millie herself, this show is a charmer.

 

- Kerry Lengel