Entertainment

Got rhythm, got music — could ask for more

‘The City Club” has everything you’d want in a 1930s-set musical: a deeply flawed nightclub-owner hero, long-limbed chorus girls in a frequent state of undress, vicious fedora-wearing gangsters, a crooked cop who’d just as soon kill suspects as arrest them and a rousing jazz/blues score.

The problem is, we’ve seen it all before — done better.

This uncommonly ambitious off-Broadway show, lavishly staged by Mitchell Maxwell, is so ridden with clichés that it makes the old Warner Brothers’ melodramas seem like cinema vérité.

Set in a generic town just after the repeal of Prohibition, it concerns the shady goings on at the City Club, owned by rich kid Chaz Davenport (Andrew Pandaleon). Shaken down by a knife-wielding hood, Chaz reluctantly accepts the protection of a violent, tough-talking police lieutenant (Peter Bradbury) who turns out to have nefarious plans of his own.

Dotting the film noir plot, which includes Chaz romancing his ambitious new lead singer (Ana Hoffman), are nearly three dozen original songs composed by James Compton, Tony De Meur and Tim Brown. To their credit, the numbers, with titles like “Lollipop Man,” “Boogie Woogie Fever” and “Hot, Sweet & Blonde,” really sound like they’re from the period, and they’re well performed by the ensemble backed by an onstage five-piece band. Especially good is Kenny Brawner as Chaz’s loyal pianist — think Sam in “Casablanca”— although his acting’s not quite up to snuff.

Nor is Glenn M. Stewart’s book, strewn with lines like “Now the city’s got a place where they can leave their troubles at the door!”

By the time the singer’s true identity is revealed in yet another plot twist, your head will ache from eye-rolling. But there are compensations, not the least of which is those slinky chorus girls, who even take their curtain calls in their underwear.