Book and Lyrics: Dorothy Donnelly and Hugh Wheeler; Music: Sigmund Romberg. At: Light Opera Works at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston. Phone: 847-869-6300; $32-$92. Runs through: Aug. 28
American operettas used to be all the rage on Broadway when the 19th century passed over into the 20th century. But then their jazzier and brasher musical theater cousins started stealing away the limelight and the crowds when the late 1920s and '30s rolled around.
One of the final few successful flowerings of American operetta was Sigmund Romberg's 1924 Broadway operetta The Student Prince, which boasted a longer original Broadway run than the seminal landmark musical Show Boat (608 performances to 572). The classic operetta is still remembered thanks to a 1950s film adaptation featuring Mario Lanza's vocals and its rousing score (especially the much-reprised "Drinking Song" which was recently used to hawk Dasani water in TV commercials).
For its fourth rendition of The Student Prince, Light Opera Works has whipped up a frothily fun production. Director/choreographer Rudy Hogenmiller has a grand time moving about the show's uniformed Heidelberg college students and southern German beer garden waitresses in this wonderfully traditional production featuring Jeff Hendry's brocade-filled plush period costumes and Tom Burch's oh-so Germanic sets.
As the romantically torn college-age Prince Karl Franz, William Bennett certainly delivers when it comes to the vocal goods (and he's certainly not bad to look at with his boyish and fresh-faced features). Too bad Bennett is too wooden with his acting skills to make you truly care for his dilemma of royal duty versus the longings of his heart.
Much more animated and heart-string-pulling is Danielle M. Knox as the lover-struck waitress Kathie, who can more than hold her own among a group of carousing college students (and rightfully pull the audience's focus away from them and onto herself). Knox is also vocally adept for the role, scaling the heights well with Bennett in tow.
In terms of plot, there's not a lot with its creaky story of a duty-bound prince who relishes living a normal student's life as talked up by tutor Dr. Engel (a rather stiff Bill Stone). But all of the music and dancing helps to propel things along, as does the invaluable comic timing of Dale Benson as the prince's prissy and doddery aging valet Lutz. Without Benson's great comic contributions to whip up audience laughter, this Student Prince would have been a slog to get through.
Though none of the supporting characters reach the characteristic heights as Benson's uppity valet, they get the job done, more or less. This is how one can view Light Opera Works' Student Prince revival: reliably fizzy entertainment, if nothing extremely fresh or new.