Night Clubs Reviews

Mar 5, 2000 - Hilton's "Work That Skirt" Needs More Work Before "Skirt" Works

By Jack Neal

"Work That Skirt" is one of those unfortunate show titles that conjures up lots of images, only some of them dealing with music and dance. According to the Reno Hilton, where the show opened Friday, February 17, "'Work That Skirt' is a high energy, jitter-bugging jaunt through six decades of American music and dance."

The cast works overtime to give that press release validity.

Produced by Julie Renn, the show puts its 21-member cast through an excruciating number of similarly choreographed jazz and swing dances that are supposed to knock audiences off their feet that must knock the dancers off theirs before that pleasure gets to an audience. Individual numbers aren't the problem, although some individual numbers are problematic. It's the collective impact of the production, limping as it does into a collision with an audience's toleration for sameness, that makes "Work That Skirt" run out of gas long before its final curtain.

Not that the kids of the cast don't try. They do all the requisite dances - jazz, tap, jive and swing - and cover the map from the Savoy Ballroom to some dive buried deep inside Hitler's Third Reich and they do it with the kind of arms-flailing, feet-crashing energy that normally spells success. I mean, how can an audience resist? That the cast's release of so much energy isn't irresistible and doesn't spell success is the fault of choreography that lacks invention and a production scheme that lacks balance and variety.

Renn attempts to do two things, both at odds with one another. She works at filling the world's largest indoor stage and she miniaturizes the action (in an attempt, no doubt, to make the show intimate) all at once. That it doesn't work is an understatement. What's left are odd sightlines (lots of action below the view of many in the audience) and confusion over where to locate what's going on (Is it in front, where the sound is coming from, or...?).

Ultimately, "Work That Skirt" is too much ado about too little. The production struggles at making jazz and swing work as though both were bereft of substance. It's a matter of finding the right stuff and handling it in the right way. It's a pity about the show's substantive omissions, because "Skirt's" talented troupe appears able to do most anything. The Cab Calloway impersonation isn't bad, nor the boogie woogie bugling of the show's momento to the Andrew Sisters. The excellent on-stage, ten-piece band is terrific, the only drawback being that it's too small to be called "big."

Then there are the show's segues to nowhere, such as a really nice adagio segment featuring a dashing sailor and a gorgeous girl in a dazzling red dress that fizzles before the fade out through no fault of the dancers. And that embarrassing replica of an Ajax commercial, made even more embarrassing on opening night when the number's lip-syncers were left without sound, giving new immediacy to the old phrase "if at first you don't succeed."

Adding the seriousness of the Hitler regime's attempted ban on the decadent American import (all that jazz) that so appealed to 1930's German youth, only makes "Work That Skirt" shift into a docu-entertainment gear that doesn't have a prayer at panning out in a casino-nightclub milieu; at least not the way it's being done here.

And so it goes for "Work That Skirt," with heavyhandedness and lack of creative focus sinking a show that relies on top-notch and varied choreography and most of all buoyancy. The idea of swingin' through time is a good one. With lots of work this "Skirt" might some day work.

"Work That Skirt" plays the Reno Hilton Theater, 2500 East Second Street, Reno, at 8 p.m. Saturdays through Wednesdays and 9 p.m. on Fridays. There are no performancers on Thursdays. For information call 775-789-2285 or 1-800-648-3568.