Stage Door Revives Hit Jukebox Revue ‘What’s New Pussycat’

The secret of the improbable success of the ’60s musical revue What’s New Pussycat — The Soundtrack of an Era at Broward Stage Door is encapsulated in the second-to-last musical number.

The smooth solid voices of six performers are caressing the first familiar strains of “Moon River” when something happens. The canned background music stops and the singers, sitting on the edge of the stage, launch into a lovely six-part a cappella harmony.

More important, the delicate intricate arrangement takes the overly-familiar classic and bends it just enough and the cast invests it with just enough genuine sentiment that the tune seems as fresh as the first time you heard it.

So without violating the spirit of the original and the memories that it summons up in the audience, the show does not at all feel like a commercialized pandering K-tel Greatest Hits album.

The entire show of about 50 songs from throughout the decade is not as uniformly strong as that high point, and the show is constantly fighting (usually successfully) to avoid a strong whiff of elevator music homogenization.