30's, 40's, Lindy Hop, Hip Hop, Broadway -- Its all in "The All Night Strut!"

BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic

Think of it this way: It's a 1940s USO dance hall extravaganza full of lindy-hoppers; it's a smoky jazz club of almost any vintage; it's a Latin dance party with more sizzle than a jalapeno; it's "42nd Street," the Cirque du Soleil, "Stomp!" and a hip-hop competition all rolled into one; and on top of everything else, it's a riff on that hit TV series "Dancing With the Stars."
Yes, all this in one faster-than-the-speed-of-light two-hour show -- a crazy, metabolism-boosting danceathon-with-vocals that opened Wednesday night at the Marriott Theatre bearing the misleadingly nostalgia-tinged title "The All Night Strut! (A Fascinatin' Rhythm)."
Based on a revue by Fran Charnas that dreamily charted the mood in America as it moved through the rich songbook of the 1930s and '40s (a show created in the 1970s and staged at the now-defunct Drury Lane Theatre in Evergreen Park in 1999), the piece now has been almost totally transformed by director-choreographer Marc Robin and his team (including co-conceiver Aaron Thielen), so that it moves like an express train bound for this very moment.
The whole thing is now far more of a Las Vegas-style spectacle in a variety-show state of mind than a standard-issue Broadway revue. But Robin has given each of the individual segments a great snap, crackle and pop, even generating some real dramatic heat along the way. And he gets loads of help from his six highly creative musical arrangers; a group of "specialty" dance choreographers; a corps of dancers who might just be breaking aerobics records; a group of singers who swing, swing, swing, and a band (several of whose fine musicians even brave the stage) that matches them beat for beat.
He also has threaded all the pieces of this dance quilt together with Coda (deft work by Matt Schwader), the sort of naughtily zany and graceful Cirque-like clown guide you either love or want to hit with a cream pie.
All the music of the 1930s and '40s is still there (Doug Peck is the superb musical director, Patti Garwood the conductor). A stunning swing-dance opener to "In the Mood" gets things flying courtesy of bravura dancers Beverly Durand and Mark Stuart Eckstein (who later will leave burn marks with a sensational Latin duet), Nia Gregory, Joe Komara, Pia Manalo, Tommy Rapley, Lisa Rumbauskas and Christopher Windom. (Other fine dancer-singers include Matt Raftery, Kristy Luehm, Allison Stodola, Ian Liberto, Dara Cameron, Nicole Famighetti, Buddy Reeder, Tucker Ty and Lucy Carapetyan, who soars as the aerial artist on silk ropes in "White Cliffs of Dover").
The principal singers -- Susie McMonagle (a terrific comedian and a performer who could easily pass for a clone of one of the Andrews Sisters), Susan Moniz (an actress of fierce emotional power), Stephen Schellhardt and Jim Weitzer -- follow up with such songs as "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "Minnie the Moocher" and a series of golden World War II-era songs that ring evocatively for the soldiers of our own time, too.
The show ends with a flashy reprise of "Lullaby of Broadway," but there is nothing "sleepy" about this or any other part of this high-octane entertainment engine.
hweiss@suntimes.com

You can catch the show at the Marriott Theater in Chicago http://www.marriotttheatre.com/musicals_strut.asp