Pal Joey

IVORIES GIRL Channing unwinds with a piano-playing Risch

Photograph: Joan Marcus

Know what you need for a really bang-up Pal Joey? A leading man who can dance up a storm, sing with the angels and wear his clothes like a model. A guy with brains, gigawatts of sex appeal and that X factor of star-in-the-making zeal. Easy, no? The Roundabout Theatre Company gets a lot right with its handsome revival of the 1940 Rodgers and Hart gem—just not the mook on the marquee.

As Rialto watchers know, original leading man Christian Hoff of Jersey Boys injured himself during previews—or was axed. Either way, the role is devilishly hard. In the first few minutes of Joe Mantello’s stylish production, aspiring nightclub-entertainer-cum-cad Joey Evans (Risch) dances a high-energy number with the overture, switches immediately into crooning “Chicago (A Great Big Town),” then more hoofing and snappy patter with the club owner—all with barely a second to catch his breath. Does Risch break a sweat? Wide as the Yangtze River. No doubt the goal is to wow the audience from the get-go with a multitalented Joey, but mostly we see a sweet, ardent chorus boy working overtime to pay the bills.

If Pal Joey has a weak center, the glitter at the fringes is plenty engaging. Richard Greenberg’s overhaul of the John O’Hara book flashes with crystal wit and shadows of melancholy, raising the emotional stakes for each character and eschewing O’Hara’s more formulaic plot devices. Martha Plimpton makes a sizzling musical-theater debut as the jaded singer Gladys Bumps, dryly unzipping Lorenz Hart’s perfectly packaged rhymes. And Stockard Channing is unsurprisingly classy and poised; she may not be a great singer, but the arch intensity she lends to “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” is an object lesson in confident charisma. If only she could have lent some of that star presence to Risch.