Entertainment

Even in a scaled-down concert version, ‘On Your Toes’ is still jubilant fun

According to current conventional wisdom, 1936’s “On Your Toes” could never cut it again on Broadway. After all, it features a goofy fun plot, songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and lots of dancing — including a show-stopping story ballet by George Balanchine.

That’s right, we really can’t have this slop on the Great White Way.

Happily, “On Your Toes” is back, however briefly, in a joyful Encores! concert production running through the weekend.

Reflecting its creative team’s diverse backgrounds, the show melded the classical and the jazzy in a way that was groundbreaking nearly 80 years ago. Now it feels simultaneously quaint and daring.

The story is a classic clash of civilizations. Junior Dolan (Shonn Wiley), the youngest of a vaudeville dynasty, has given up the family business to teach music. He decides to pitch one of his students’ new compositions to the classically minded Russian Ballet company.

Manager Peggy Porterfield (Christine Baranski) and impresario Sergei Alexandrovitch (Walter Bobbie) eventually agree to use it for a new ballet, in which their star, Vera Baronova, will be a slinky stripper. Playing the feisty Russian ballerina is a feisty Ukrainian ballerina, American Ballet Theatre principal Irina Dvorovenko.

Streamlining a show that mixes tutus and tap shoes into a coherent whole is tricky, and this final Encores! of the season can be uneven. The biggest issue is Wiley, who’s good-natured and hard-working, but lacks charisma. As Junior’s love interest, the golden-voiced Kelli Barrett eclipses him in their duets, “It’s Got To Be Love” and “There’s a Small Hotel” — the two best-known songs, though the score has several other gems, like “Glad To Be Unhappy.”

It’s also tough for Balanchine’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” to kill when the orchestra fills up half the stage. And once again, Wiley is overshadowed by his partner, Dvorovenko.

She’s so effortlessly hilarious as a flighty diva that it’s hard to believe this is her first speaking role. New York City Ballet’s Joaquin De Luz is also quite funny as another petulant, overly dramatic Slav.

On the other hand, no fan of TV’s “The Good Wife” will be surprised by Baranski’s expert performance.

“Miss Potterfield, can a good man love two women at the same time?” a confused Junior asks.

“If he’s very good,” Baranski purrs, with a naughty smile.

Director Warren Carlyle keeps things moving fluidly, and his choreography for the title number — a dance battle between boisterous Americans and tradition-minded Russians — is just exhilarating fun. If there’s no place for this anymore, maybe the problem lies with Broadway, not “On Your Toes.”