Tap-dancing gangsters and cross-dressing musicians -- it's really no wonder "Sugar" is a comedy classic.

The musical, currently showing at the Arrow Rock Lyceum, is sure to especially please audiences who enjoyed "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" last year.

The play is virtually a cast reunion, at least of several key characters.

Whit Reichert, Keith Gerchak and Elena Gronlund starred in the musical spoof of corporate ladder-climbing and in "Sugar" they fill somewhat similar roles -- but in a much better work.

While "How To Succeed ..." was clever and fun, "Sugar" is both funnier and more interesting -- and gives each actor a chance to show more depth.

"Sugar" is a musical version of the classic 1959 film comedy, "Some Like it Hot," which starred Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as Jerry and Joe, two Chicago musicians who witness a mob hit and are forced to dress in drag and join an all-girl band in order to get out of town alive.

Cross-dressing, of course, has a long and glorious place in the history of comedy (Where would Shakespeare have been without it?), but for even this most traditional of tricks to work, it has to be executed in the proper way.

In cases of men dressing as women, the actors must be a little awkward in their efforts to negotiate the clothing and conventions of femininity but not so obvious about it that they give away the disguise.

And it helps if they have moments when they inadvertently begin to relish their gender-bending role.

Gerchak, as Jerry/Daphne, and Jeffrey C. Wolf, as Joe/Josephine, are excellent at providing that delicate balance between masculinity and femininity, shifting between the two roles plausibly but not entirely gracefully.

The show depends for most of its laughs on the physical humor of the men adjusting bras and changing from dresses to nightgowns.

But it's not all falling-off-high-heels slap-stick. The script is riddled with verbal humor that exploits the situation, like the moment when Daphne/Joe confides to Sugar Kane, "Sometimes I worry that I'll never be a mother."

Though Joe and Jerry get most of the laughs, two other characters bring a sparkle to the production. Whit Reichert, a familiar face to Lyceum audiences who have enjoyed his performances, most notably as Benjamin Franklin in last year's "1776," plays Osgood Fielding, a millionaire looking for his eighth or ninth wife.

I'm not sure whether there's precedent or whether the current cast and crew dreamed it up, but Reichert adds a dash of Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion to his portrayal of Fielding in both verbal and physical mannerisms.

It's a nice touch, making his character more jolly and lovable (if still rather dense and lecherous) than he might otherwise have been.

Another funny, though minor, character is Spats Palazzo, played by Len Pfluger, as the tap-dancing gangster.

Local actors Michael Brennan and Geoff Howard contribute to the success of the show as well, Brennan as one of Palazzo's henchmen (the one who doesn't tap-dance) and Howard as Mr. Bienstock, the manager of the all-girl band.

Elena Gronlund is as alluring as ever in the role famously played in the film version by Marilyn Monroe.

What makes "Sugar" a real gem is the fact that it doesn't just make jokes at the expense of either men or women but actually explores some of the challenges facing each.

The ending, in fact, seems now to be rather ahead of its time in terms of accepting alternative lifestyles, as the oddest of couples leaves the stage.

"Sugar" runs through Wednesday, July 18.

On the Net:

http://www.lyceumtheatre.org

Contact Eric Crump at

marshalleditor@socket.net