The Encores! production of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is like a dessert stuffed with juicy morsels. Why quibble because the cake doesn’t always hold the fruity bits together?
The lushest nibble in this happy, Jazz Age-set confection is Megan Hilty, who plays gold-digging Lorelei Lee with irresistible va-va-voom.
She had her work cut out for her, having to overcome two legends’ looming shadows: Carol Channing, who created Lorelei on Broadway in 1949, and Marilyn Monroe, who immortalized her in the 1953 movie. She’s even battling her own day gig: Hilty is a regular on the TV series “Smash,” where her character is trying to land the starring role in a bio-musical about . . . Marilyn.
Happily, Hilty makes Lorelei her own, thanks to a sure comic touch and vocal pizzazz. The blonde’s ambition may be to land a rich guy, but she pursues it with endearing, goofy sweetness. A luscious mix of voluptuous sex-appeal and healthy vulgarity — she informs us that “Arkansas is where I was . . . reared” and invites visitors by braying “On-tray!” — this Lorelei is a deceptively wily hayseed.
Hilty also has great fun with Jule Styne and Leo Robin’s score. Even better than the hit “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is “I’m Just a Little Girl from Little Rock,” where she milks such saucy lyrics as “I came to New York and I found out/The one you call your daddy ain’t your pa.”
But Lorelei’s not alone out there. Sailing to Paris with fellow social climber Dorothy Shaw (Rachel York), she’s surrounded by rich kooks, a brash manufacturer of zippers and a gaggle of Olympics-bound athletes. Joining them later will be a pair of Pepe Le Pew-accented Frenchmen and a manufacturer of buttons.
And why not? The show doesn’t need to make sense, it just needs to delight. And it does.
You find yourself smiling at the unlikely rhymes — “Sunshine, sunshine, ooh! la la/Skies are blue, la la” — and zany situations. Director John Rando keeps up with the shenanigans, while choreographer Randy Skinner (“42nd Street”) delivers the evening’s giddiest scenes, including a fab tap trio for Phillip Attmore, Jared Grimes and Megan Sikora.
“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” may not be filling, but what a great sugar high!