FACE THE MUSIC! The Encores! series might grow another exclamation mark this season--that's how good its productions are turning out to be! Follies was a tough act to follow, but the current revival of the Irving Berlin-Moss Hart 1932 musical Face the Music--is a sparkling, revelatory success.

Together with two other Encores! highlights directed by John Rando--Strike Up the Band (1927) and Of Thee I Sing (1931), both by the Gershwins--Face the Music is a reminder of how entertaining and satirical the shows of its period could be. Almost from its first second, it trots out the cliches of a super-wholesome "Let's Put on a Show" musical, but--at least in this restoration involving David Ives [whose program notes are inspired] as well as Bruce Pomahac--it soon subverts them.

Led by a producer who prides himself on squandering investment money, the Depression-era showpeople patch together their Follies with the help of thoroughly corrupt cops and save the show by resorting to naughtiness. You don't have to know the story of Mae West's sensational 1926 play Sex to find the broad comedy in this or make the connections with Mel Brooks's The Producers. It's funny, surprising, and thoroughly delightful, performed by a great singing and dancing cast featuring Judy Kaye, Felicia Finley delivering a torch song to end all torch songs, and the great pairings of Jeffry Denman/Meredith Paterson and Mylinda Hull/Eddie Korbich.

[The timing of this production--during the runs of The Producers and The Drowsy Chaperone and the opening of the B-musical festival at the Film Forum--is excellent.] With Kristin Chenoweth slotted for the next production, Stairway to Paradise, this season promises to be an outstanding [extraordinary] one for Encores!!

Here are Korbich and Hull.

















And here are Patterson and Denman.


















Photos: Joan Marcus