f course “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” opens with a song about nostalgia, “Neighborhood.” What else could a musical revue of ’50s and ’60s rock-and-roll songs possibly begin with?

	The Pioneer Theatre folks shake up some classic pop songs with sultry clothing and high heels in "Smokey Joe's Cafe"

Luckily the play, which Pioneer Theatre Company opened last night, manages to be more than just an exercise in the cheap sentiment of, “Gee whiz, weren’t times swell before MTV and hippies?” Ironically, it does so by taking the songs’ rock and R & B roots and tweaking them, converting almost all of them into little pieces of theater.

You would almost have to. Playing most of the music straight would have truly made the show nothing more than a nostalgia piece. Instead it plays up anything it can for entertainment value. The result is a sometimes bumpy, but often enjoyable, show.

The play is a tribute to song writing legends Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, whose songs made notable appearances in the careers of performers from Elvis and Little Richard to Barbra Streisand.

They’re all pop songs, which means 90 percent of them are about love. There are no dark secrets about life or humanity revealed here, but it makes for some pretty good entertainment.

Actors overcome some truly dopey costumes and sort of an awkward set to sing the hell out of on each and every song. Many of the pieces almost stage themselves—“D.W. Washburn” and the gospel-y “Saved” play like they were made for the theater. The production doesn’t seem to know what to do with straighter numbers like “Yakety Yak/Charlie Brown” and “Searchin’” and so resorts to campy dancing and cheap comedy.

Since so many of the songs are well-known, they also can’t seem like rip-offs of the originals. The production avoids it in “Hound Dog,” where Gabrielle Goyette rips through the song, sounding more like Big Mama Thornton, the song’s original singer, than Elvis. The same cannot be said for David Villella’s “Jailhouse Rock,” which comes off merely as a cheap imitation of the King, or David Jackson’s rather uninspired version of “Spanish Harlem.”

“Smokey Joe’s” fares the best with lesser known songs—Debra Walton vamps it up to great success in “Don Juan” and “Some Cats Know.” “Little Egypt” is amusing and Mary Fanning Driggs’s “I Keep on Forgettin’” is one of the production’s better ballads.

Jackson, Derrick Baskin, Wilkie Ferguson and Nicholas Ward make up the show’s requisite R & B quartet. They pop up throughout with Temptations-esque choreography—they even sound like the legendary group in “On Broadway”—as well as the show’s finale, “Stand by Me.”

“Smokey Joe’s” contains a good mix of rousing (occasionally even show-stopping) numbers and quieter ballads. Most of the songs are blessedly short, and there are little or no transitions between them, ending the running time at about two hours. Any longer and even the most hard-core rock-and roll fan would be sneaking out to avoid a musical overdose. As it was, even the normally staid PTC audience clapped and whistled a bit.

Pioneer Theatre Company’s (300 S. 1400 East) production of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” runs through Dec. 20. Tickets range from $22 to $49, with discounts available to University of Utah students and large groups. For information, call the box office at (801) 581-6961 or visit www.pioneertheatre.org.
bobbi@red-mag.com