Back on Broadway

Inside an old bagel factory on Eagle Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Megan Hilty is dancing in a rehearsal hall with “Today” show host Kathie Lee Gifford. Their audience is a group of public school children seated on the shiny wood floor. Both Hilty and Gifford wear identical curly blond wigs, but it’s clear who the real talent here is: Hilty, wearing a sleeveless apricot cocktail dress and crazy high heels, belts out a song called “20th Century Fox Mambo” with her customary verve while dancing with a bunch of guys and dolls in ’40s attire. As arguably the most talented person on the beleaguered NBC musical drama — an unhappy mix of slick production numbers and dated “Knots Landing”-style dialogue — she has a hard road ahead of her if the series, which has already seen its creator, Theresa Rebeck, and several of its cast members shown the door, is to make it through a second, expensive season.

Hilty, 31, had almost no TV experience when she started on “Smash” as Ivy Lynn, a chorine who would stop at nothing to become a star, even if it meant sleeping her way to the top. The classically trained Carnegie Mellon grad aced production numbers and sang to the camera like she was singing to her No. 1 fan in the front row at the St. James Theater. While the show’s “dramatic” scenes elicited yawns (the Debra Messing adoption story line), Hilty played everything, well, to the hilt.

“There’s this big myth that musical theater performers can’t do TV or film because we’re way too big — we’re too Broadway — but I think our job is two things: to tell a story and engage the audience and that’s it,” she says. “So if your audience is 2,000 people or one person right in your face you’re going to do it differently. I think it’s just gauging your audience and planning accordingly.”

Hilty has finished her musical number with Lee and is taking a well-deserved lunch break with the cast and crew in a cavernous room in another part of the bagel factory. She has changed from black patent leather pumps to a pair of Uggs and covered her bare shoulders with a navy blue zippered sweater. She sang in almost every episode of Season 1, but was saddled with a soapy subplot where she and co-star Katharine McPhee’s rivalry for the lead in the Marilyn Monroe musical “Bombshell” culminated in a cheesy seduction and betrayal scene with McPhee’s fiancé. It might have seemed fresh on “All My Children” — in 1985.

In between bites of a broiled chicken and green beans, Hilty reveals that Ivy has repented and cleaned up her act.

“Ivy really turns it around this season,” she says. “She’s making a lot of changes, personally and professionally. I’ve got really great storylines. Ivy and Karen really don’t have a lot to do together this season. We’re rivals in a different way this year. And we’re not working in each other’s lives like we were last year.”

Keeping the two actresses apart seems like a good idea, as McPhee, an “American Idol” finalist, is no vocal match for Hilty. Trained to be an opera singer, Hilty was impatient to start her career. “My voice teacher was very upset with me when she learned I was going to major in musical theater,” says Hilty, who changed her mind “when I found out that I really wouldn’t work until I was in my 30s. Because that’s really when the female voice hits its maturity.” Musical theater gives her kind of flexibility that allows her appear on shows like “Smash.”

“I just never wanted my voice to rule my life,” she says.

In Season 2, “Smash” has made other separations as well. The moribund marriage of childish lyricist Julia Houston (Debra Messing) and her frustrated husband, Frank (Brian d’Arcy James) is finally dispensed with, after an embarrassing bit of adultery that included a ridiculous pregnancy scare for Julia (“I haven’t thrown up since I was . . . pregnant,” she confided to her writing partner, Tom Levitt, at the end of last season). The engagement between Karen Cartwright (McPhee) and Dev Sundaram (Raza Jeffrey) is also kaput. And everyone’s least favorite character — the odious personal assistant, Ellis (Jaime Cepero) — has been banished for good.

Their replacements give hope that “Smash” might be on the right track. Tony nominee Jeremy Jordan plays Jimmy Collins, a singing bartender who has written a rock musical with his music partner Kyle Bishop, played by Andy Mientus. Krysta Rodriguez plays Karen’s new roommate, Ana Vargas. Jennifer Hudson flounces in for a three-episode arc as Veronica Moore, a proven Broadway star who teams up with Karen for a lively duet of “On Broadway” in the first episode.

Rescuing “Smash” was a daunting task for executive producer Josh Safran (“Gossip Girl”). He refocused the story lines so that they all connected to the production of “Bombshell.” Safran insists that the show will open this season. (“Bombshell has a lot of stumbling blocks, but we’ll get there,” he says.) He also “cleaned up the rules” for singing songs that were not part of the “Bombshell” score, making it “more clear when characters were singing about their inner emotions.” Most innovative is his introduction of a second show, “Hit List,” that would use some of the new cast members and demonstrate that there are dozens of shows opening during any Broadway season.

As Ivy, Hilty will also appear in a musical on the show called “Liaisons.” The singer is also releasing her first solo CD, “It Happens All the Time,” a collection of songs by contemporary songwriters that gives voice to a year of romantic ups-and-downs. Since “Smash” premiered, she broke up with Tony-winning boyfriend Steve Kazee (“I really don’t want to talk about him”), found a new boyfriend, actor Brian Gallagher, whom she met at a fitness class, and even fended off rumors that she was dating Nick Jonas, who did an arc on “Smash” last season.

“When all that stuff started, I was shocked,” she says, finishing her lunch. “He’s a great friend, but that’s it. And he’s 19. I’m too young to be a cougar.”

SMASH

Tuesday, 9 p.m., NBC