There is smart and then there is smart-aleck, and these twains meet with joyful friction in City of Angels. The 1989 Broadway musical is a Hollywood satire, both of the sausage-making process of getting a script onto the screen and, in alternating scenes, what that movie would look like once it made it to the screen. An actual movie editor would seem to have it easy next to the challenge of staging the material live, where the two worlds must exist together in real time and in the flesh.
Musicals have not been a particular forte of San Francisco Playhouse, but its production of City of Angels is a game-changer. This is a musical that needs sharp-as-a-tack skills in every department, and that sharpness can be found throughout the production. Let's start with the elaborate set by director Bill English that has the "real" world of moviemaking downstage, and a second upstage proscenium that represents a movie screen where all the sets, props, and costumes are devoid of color for the black-and-white film being shot.
An actress might be in a red dress downstage in one moment before reappearing moments later upstage in a black frock via Melissa Torchia's period costumes of the 1940s that feature lots of broad shoulders, clingy satins, and class-climbing overstatement. The di-chromatic worlds are a clever touch provided by the musical's creators, and director English's staging makes smooth the transitions that could be lumpy. There isn't much full-out dancing in this musical, but it wouldn't be surprising if choreographer Morgan Dayley's work also extended to the charmingly well-honed bits that have the movie's characters run in reverse whenever a scene gets rewritten.
The story of an idealistic writer sucked into the philistine maw of the Hollywood machinery is hardly new to City of Angels. But Larry Gelbart, whose works include A Funny Thing Happened on Broadway, MASH on television, and Tootsie in the movies, lets the story mock its own cliches while coming up with dialogue that has uncommon zing. The songs by composer Cy Coleman and lyricist David Zippel pull from the sounds of the 1940s, with an unpredictable mix of pop, jazz, swing, and a crooning quartet that slides in and out of the action. Their flavors always seem right for the moment, and the small orchestra led by musical director David Dobrusky has a big, assured sound.
This story and these songs need savvy guidance, which English provides in his direction, and the cast is in harmony with both the sung and spoken material. City of Angels actually has dual, and sometimes dueling, leading men. There are a bookish screenwriter and the tough-talking gumshoe hero from his novel that he is under contract to adapt, hoping not to have to completely sell his soul in the process.
Jeffrey Brian Adams has a quiet strength as Stine, the writer threatened to be broken by the studio system, while Brandon Dahlquist creates the writer's alter ego, Stone, and he confidently captures the comic exaggerations of the Dashiell Hammett-style private eye without losing a charismatic connection to the character. The conflicting personalities of writer and character come to a head as the two performers put across the insistent rhythms of "You're Nothing Without Me," which brings down the first-act curtain with confident flair.
Adams and Dahlquist stick with their individual characters throughout, but there is double casting in other main roles, with characters from the real world reflected in the fun-house mirror of the reel world. Among these performers, Nanci Zoppi is perhaps best at capturing the parallel moods as the caustic wife of the movie's producer and as the calculating dame who hires Stone to find her missing stepdaughter.
Ryan Drummond plays only a corpse in the movie, but makes abundant use of his stage time as the crude movie producer with a gift for mixed metaphors and a ruthless editor's pencil. Monique Haffen finds riches in the role of the producer's misused secretary and as the private eye's pining Gal Friday, with both getting a chance at the woe-is-me power ballad "You Can Always Count on Me." Haffen also has a second big song, "What You Don't Know About Women," this one effectively shared with Caitlan Taylor, who plays Stine's sensible wife and Stone's long-lost love.
City of Angels had a healthy original Broadway run and won that season's Tony Award for best musical, but there was a notion that it was just a little too smart to go the megahit route. But its size, style, and sophistication are right at home at SF Playhouse, which can now add musicals to its honor roll.
City of Angels will run through Sept. 17 at San Francisco Playhouse. Tickets are $20-$125. Call (415) 677-9596 or go to sfplayhouse.org.