This undercooked jukebox musical features the songs of 1960s girl group the Shirelles, but focuses on the story of Florence Greenberg (Beth Leavel, far right), their manager. (Ari Mint)
Every night’s a baby boomer’s delight at the Broadhurst, where the new jukebox musical “Baby It’s You!” rolls out one golden oldie after another. And this happy-clappy show has a large inventory to pull from: After all, it’s about Florence Greenberg.
Say who?
Only vinyl geeks know Greenberg — played by the likable Beth Leavel, from “The Drowsy Chaperone” — but any American over 50 is familiar with the hits she released on her indie labels from the late ’50s to the mid-’60s. “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen, “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick — those were Greenberg’s singles.
But her greatest discovery was the Shirelles, the four teenagers — high school classmates of her daughter — she rocketed to girl-group fame.
Written by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, the team that brought us the lame rockabilly fest “Million Dollar Quartet,” “Baby It’s You!” wavers uneasily between Greenberg’s life story and the Shirelles’ career arc. As such, the show is neither fish nor fowl, but neither is it as foul as its authors’ pedigree would suggest.
Opportunistic is a better word: Many of those hits exemplify a kind of pop craftsmanship that peaked in the early ’60s, and they still sound fantastic. It’s easy to see why you’d want to put them onstage.
They just deserved a better showcase.
Mutrux and Sheldon Epps’ in-and-out staging is like a glorified revue, an impression reinforced by the book’s bullet-point approach. The biographical elements dig barely deeper than the superfluous historical markers (“As 1960 passes, ‘Bonanza’ is TV’s best”).
With more ambition and focus, “Baby It’s You!” could have been “Jersey Girls” — the female answer to the juggernaut musical about the Four Seasons.
Greenberg starts off as a bored Jewish housewife from the Garden State, then becomes a canny music-biz exec and a sexually liberated woman — the last thanks to her interracial affair with producer Luther Dixon (Allan Louis). But the part is written in the broadest strokes imaginable.
And still that’s better than the Shirelles, who have the best songs but no back story. They don’t even get their biggest hit, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” because the show couldn’t get the rights.
There are bright spots. Lizz Wolf sends out a parade of sterling costumes. And it’s fun to hear the hardworking Leavel Broadway-ize songs like “Mama Said” and “Don’t Make Me Over.” The power-piped Christina Sajous also stands out as the Shirelles’ Shirley Owens. That this show would have great old songs was a given; that it delivers a great new performer is an unexpected gift.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com