Die-hard New York historians are likely to be very unhappy with director Mary Zimmerman's joyously buoyant take on the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical comedy Wonderful Town. But everyone else probably won't care about the displeasure of these fact-sticklers, since there's so much to recommend in this superlative and big-hearted Goodman Theatre production.

Wonderful Town was written as a rush-job 1953 stage vehicle tailored to the talents of Hollywood star Rosalind Russell—hence the very low singing range for one of the musical's leading ladies. The show reunited On the Town collaborators composer Leonard Bernstein with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, while book writers Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov adapted their earlier 1940 play My Sister Eileen ( which was drawn from 1930s New Yorker stories by Ruth McKenney ).

Wonderful Town plays up the comical exploits and setbacks of transplanted Ohio sisters Ruth ( Bri Sudia ) and Eileen Sherwood ( Lauren Molina ), who respectively try to make it big in New York City as a writer and actress. But Wonderful Town is also a celebration of the alternately squalid and idealized Greenwich Village neighborhood the Sherwood sisters settle in, plus their boisterous bohemian neighbors.

What will enrage historians is the decision of Zimmerman and her design team to update Wonderful Town from the 1930s to the 1950s. This makes many of the tongue-twisting lyrics referenced in Ruth's exasperated production number "Conga!" very dated, while the explosive comic business of subway tunnael construction wouldn't have been an issue.

Nonetheless, the cartoonish look of Todd Rosenthal's cut-out skyscraper sets with the bright period costumes of Ana Kuzmanic sonically match the jazzy New York score of Wonderful Town. Many of the scenic transitions with choreographer Alex Sanchez are also marvelous design collaborations to make audiences gasp in awe and delight.

But even more crucially, Zimmerman has inclusively cast Wonderful Town with expert comic actors in smaller character parts and throughout the ensemble. Everyone contributes to make the sometimes creaky script feel fresh and spontaneously silly.

Sudia and Molina have great chemistry together and they have a knack for their characters' respective sarcasm and blissful naiveté. Other standouts include the cool-cat club owner Speedy Valenti of James Earl Jones II, Jordan Brown's butch yet occasionally feminine football player Wreck and Wade Elkins' hilariously gawky Walgreens manager Frank Lippencott.

Another major reason to see the Goodman's Wonderful Town is to relish the big and jazzy orchestral sound curated by music director Doug Peck. Productions this expert of a lesser-known show like Wonderful Town are few and far in between, so don't miss out on your chance to experience it—even if historians loudly grumble.