Copperstate’s Broadway Jukebox Pushes All the Right Buttons (Grade: A-)

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Chris Page | Get Out

Copperstate Dinner Theater’s “Broadway Jukebox” really shouldn’t work.

Its premise – a choose-your-own-adventure evening of Broadway showtunes picked beforehand by the audience from a roster of some 120 ditties – is like witnessing an afternoon’s auditions in the seventh circle of Hades. A slow-moving barrage of syrupy ballads, as if sitting down to a toothachey meal of nothing but desserts. A recipe for indigestion.

Thankfully, it delivers nothing of the sort. The production, which calls itself “the world’s first interactive musical,” turns out to be one of the better revues to come along in the Valley.

Credit Peter Hill, the Copperstate honcho and local revue-meister nonpareil, whose sarcastic stamp is all over this fun and occasionally irreverent show.

“Dontcha guys get sick of this song?” says petite actress Noel Irick, before donning a curly red wig and hugging a stuffed dog to perform “Tomorrow” – that unkillable paean to optimism from the show “Annie.”

“Yeah,” Irick adds, mugging to the crowd, “you sleep with the director, see where it gets you.”

Irick, mind you, is Hill’s wife. And the “Tomorrow” number continues to grow more absurd, as her five other cast mates join in the ditty with an increasingly outlandish array of wigs and pets.

Fun, laughs, good time – indeed. If this “Jukebox” isn’t exactly “Forbidden Broadway,” it at least operates with the tacit understanding that possessing a mental catalog of so many shows is its own special kind of masochism. And should be celebrated as such.

Most often, though, “Jukebox” plays its songs straight. Depending on what the audience chooses, they can range from mundane (a Disney medley) to near-amazing. Charlie Jourdon does a mean “Old Man River” (“Show Boat”), and when the cast belts out a powerful “One Day More” from “Les Miserables,” it’s enough to make you want to jump the stage and start waving your red cloth dinner napkin.

A couple of obvious caveats: “Broadway Jukebox” is the kind of thing best appreciated by showtune obsessives (admittedly, we are a minority lot). And be prepared to leave with a head rattling full of ear candy – a century-spanning hodgepodge of catchy ditties.

Of course, you will have helped whip up the set list. Which means there’s no one to blame but yourself.

>> “Broadway Jukebox” runs 6:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Sundays, closing Sept. 3, at the Copperstate Dinner Theater inside the Phoenix Greyhound Park, 3801 E. Washington St., Phoenix. $32.95, includes meal and gratuity. (602) 279-3129 Grade: A-