Not a hair out of place for ’The Wedding Singer’

By John Fleming

- St. Petersburg Times

There’s a junky charm to “The Wedding Singer” that makes it easy to like.

Adapted from the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore movie, this is the rare musical that gives prominent billing for hair design (Barry Lee Moe), and rightly so: It’s New Jersey in the ’80s, when big hair ruled.

The story is much the same as in the movie, with wedding singer Robbie Hart getting stood up at the altar but eventually winding up with the right girl. The pop culture references from a bygone era fly fast and furious, from New Coke to junk bonds, Mr. Belvedere to Thriller to the thrilling new experience of making a phone call from your car (“It’s called a cellular phone”).

“The Wedding Singer,” which had an eight-month run on Broadway in 2006, is touring under Live Nation’s Broadway Across America banner.

The best thing about the musical is the score by Matthew Sklar (music) and Chad Beguelin (lyrics). It’s chock-full of witty touches (a “Jump” power chord here, a riff from “Jessie’s Girl” there), and Sklar’s cheesy, synth-driven pop is loaded with catchy hooks. John Mezzio conducts the nine-piece band.

Rob Ashford’s flashy choreography (re-created for the tour by Chris Bailey) is another strength, and the good-looking young cast does it justice in the wedding party scenes and a candy-colored ballet at the Ridgefield Galleria. The ensemble dons business suits for one tremendous, nonstop dance number, “All About the Green,” set on Wall Street and featuring athletic, punishing steps.

“The Wedding Singer” is a featherweight affair, directed on Broadway by John Rando and restaged for the tour by Paul Stancato.

Merritt David Janes and Erin Elizabeth Coors are nicely paired as Robbie and the banquet server in bobby socks he falls for, Julia. Their duet in a department store, “Not That Kind of Thing,” is a gem. Coors, a tall, lanky ingenue, is adorable in Julia’s eminently hummable torch song, “Someday.”

One of the themes of “The Wedding Singer” is that you should never underestimate the power of sleaze. When Linda (Andrea Andert), Robbie’s slutty ex-girlfriend, tries to get back together with him, she does a hilarious pole dance against the water heater in his room in his grandmother’s basement, its walls covered with posters for the Cure, Elvis Costello and Van Halen.

Holly (Sarah Peak), Julia’s cousin and fellow server, is another hot babe. She sports a pink bustier and plastic crucifix when she goes clubbing in “Saturday Night in the City,” the homage to “Flashdance” that brings down the first-act curtain. Peak later has one of the finest pure musical theater moments in the show, “Right in Front of Your Eyes,” performed against a starry backdrop.

Sammy, the bass player in Robbie’s band, is a dude, the sort of guy who worships Bon Jovi. Justin Jutras plays him with goofy good humor and leads the exquisite barroom harmonies of “Single.” George, the eccentrically coiffed tambourine and keyboard player modeled on Boy George, is portrayed with suitable silliness by John Jacob Lee, whose bar mitzvah prayer in Hebrew is sublime.

The musical kind of falls apart at the end. A flock of ’80s impersonators — including Cyndi Lauper, Imelda Marcos, Tina Turner, Mr. T, Billy Idol, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan — fill up a Las Vegas wedding chapel to rev up one last high-energy dance break.

"The Wedding Singer" will be staged at 7:30 p.m. April 8, 9 and 10; 8 p.m. April 11 and 12; 2 p.m. April 12; and 1 and 6:30 p.m. April 13 at the Benedum Center, 803 Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh. Visit www.pgharts.org or call 412-546-6666 for tickets.