Theater: Good Vibrations

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Good Vibrations

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This gimmick-filled-song-propelled show was conceived and designed for generations of fans inclined to respond enthusiastically to this brand of catalogue-pandering nostalgia. Sadly it doesn't have the emotional audacity or revelatory dancing of Movin' Out, or the flagrantly delirious musicality that sparks Mamma Mia! Sadly for the Beach Boys fans and indeed, for the rest of us, Good Vibrations has been let down by a creative team that simply hasn't been very creative.

Let's concede that the casually dispersed and virtually dismissable plot wasn't meant to matter. However, I feel obliged to give the backdrop to the two hours of otherwise painless silliness.

Four seniors (presumably from New Jersey, where else?) decide to motor west to California rather than go to work. Bobby (David Larson), a slick comely operator, has duped Caroline (Kate Reinders), a pretty but brainy French Club president into believing he cares for her when what he and his friends are really after is her car. Smart Caroline is just dumb enough to have carried a torch for Bobby since their freshman year. To complete the westward bound quartet we have Eddy (Tituss Burgess) and. Bobby's best friend Dave (Brandon Wardel). Eddy l leaves his girl friend Marcella (Jessica-Snow Wilson) behind because she has a job) and Eddy does what side kicks always do ? go along for the ride.

Along the route the foursome makes short stops at various song-and-dance friendly venues. Before the end of the first act Caroline gets wind of Bobby's trick and swears never to speak to him again. Now here is where the musical's real star turns up via the entr'acte curtain that Ettinger created to depict a huge curling wave through the eye of which we see the beach and shore.

The main setting for Act II is another eye-opener -- a shimmering blue sky that meets a row of dimensional waves to give the illusion of rolling into the shore. With Brian MacDevitt and Jason Lyon's atmospheric lighting getting a workout, Ettinger's setting gradually reflects the changes from dusk to night as the lights from a distant town begin to glow as abstract reflections fill the night sky giving some validity to the saying "I left humming the sets." Once in Surf City, the four travelers make lots of friends. All have the prerequisite washboard stomachs and curvaceous contours. Costume designer Jess Goldstein surely had no difficulty fitting anyone in the company for the fashion parade of hot-colored bikinis, Hawaiian trunks, and body-clinging shorts. If the plot seems to have been washed away on a wave, not to worry. The kids either sing solo, in pairs or in groups, mostly leading into all sorts of frantically devised configurations (for example, riding skate boards over the surf and crashing bumper cars) to embellish (or rather diminish) some of the immortal gems. Of, course the plot eventually surfs back so that Caroline can make up with Bobby, Marcella catch up with Eddy and Dave, who has never learned to swim, will end up with an amiable long-haired surfer named Jan (Sebastian Arcelus who has an impressive voice).