The author of “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” and the keyboard player from Bon Jovi have hatched a really good musical.
I’ll let you mull over this sentence for a second.
“Memphis” came to New York with all sorts of warning bells. The creative team, for one. Book writer and co-lyricist Joe DiPietro and composer David Bryan may have teamed before — on “The Toxic Avenger” — but that didn’t make them naturals for a show about a white deejay (Chad Kimball) crossing the color line in 1950s Tennessee.
The cast? Kimball’s most recent Broadway credits are the bombs “Lennon” and “Good Vibrations.” Other actors rated only minor pings on the critical radar, like James Monroe Iglehart’s acclaimed turn as the Cowardly Lion in the Encores! revival of “The Wiz.”
Finally, “Memphis” bummed around the country for a good half-decade, playing everywhere from Massachusetts to California — would it be overcooked?
In this case, practice makes perfect. Or at least it makes a zippy, exuberant musical — one that relies exclusively on steadfastly “classic” values: catchy songs, heaping spoonfuls of inspirational moments and tear-jerking schmaltz, and committed performers at the top of their game.
At the core of the show is the complicated love the scrappy striver Huey Calhoun feels for both “race music” and feisty soul singer Felicia Farrell (Montego Glover).
Huey (inspired by real-life Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips) is the latest in a long line of endearing musical-theater rogues, and Kimball isn’t afraid to portray some of this operator’s less-stellar side. (The actor’s nasal speaking voice and shifty posture recalls Christian Slater, not your typical matinee lead.)
But the show is more about an era than a person, and so it generously spreads the goods among its cast. Iglehart, J. Bernard Calloway (as Felicia’s brother, Delray), Derrick Baskin (Gator) and Cass Morgan (Huey’s mom) all get notable solos, while Glover is terrific throughout, embodying rhythm and blues as she effortlessly switches from sexy to funny to emotional.
And the songs these gifted performers are given aren’t too shabby, either.
If Bon Jovi’s Bryan picked up one thing in his decades of playing arenas, it’s how to write hooks and anthemic choruses. He just ladles them out here, all the while paying homage to the variety of sounds coming out of black Memphis clubs at that time. Purists may snicker, but this score works perfectly on Broadway.
Choreographer Sergio Trujillo — easily topping his overrated work from “Jersey Boys” — and director Christopher Ashley wrap it all together with smart, brisk efficiency.
“Memphis” isn’t out to revolutionize musical theater, but its embrace of old-fashioned pleasures is immensely gratifying. Nowhere is this approach more obvious than in the emotionally charged “Colored Woman.” Alone in the spotlight, Glover simultaneously lifts up the show and stops it dead in its tracks. Of such thrills, Broadway is made.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com