STAGE REVIEWS : Squalling Band Drowns Out ‘Baby’

With the leading characters of TV’s most popular shows--”Murphy Brown” and “Cheers”--thinking about having babies, the latest baby boom is louder than ever. So Los Angeles County’s first professional production of the 1983 musical “Baby”--one of the first reflections of that boom in popular culture--is long overdue.

Too bad that the delivery, at the Golden Theatre in Burbank, isn’t very “natural” or smooth.

The musical’s strength is its superb score by David Shire (music) and Richard Maltby Jr. (lyrics). The first act ends with a magnificent anthem to the chain of life, “The Story Goes On,” that has made surly critics cry. Earlier, there are a couple of go-for-it songs that crackle under the right circumstances. The second-act sentiments are more rueful.

Yet at the Golden, the score sounds less than golden.

The five-piece band, perched behind and above the stage, is loud and tinny-sounding. The electronic instrumentation is overamplified to the point that some of the lyrics are indecipherable. This all takes place in an 86-seat theater, where one has to question why any amplification at all was necessary.

In other shows, director Gregory Scott Young has been a whiz at marshaling large casts through complex dances in this small space. But “Baby” is more of a music show than a dance show.

Young does contribute a touch of spectacle. When the youngest of the show’s three couples reunites after a period of several months, the encounter takes place at a Halloween costume party; the young woman--who is visibly pregnant but has resisted the idea of marriage--wears a wedding dress. It’s a clever little detail.

The cast is largely on target. Michael G. Hawkins and Noreen Reardon look exactly right as the mid-40s couple who have just ushered their previous children out on their own, only to learn that another one is on the way. They’re worried they might be over the hill, as parents and as mates, and the anxiety registers deeply in their features.

Elizabeth Smith and Vernon Willett are the couple in their 30s who want to conceive but can’t--so far. Willett has the virile voice and looks of a guy who must be truly crushed to learn that the fertility problem is his, and Smith has the fashion model figure appropriate for a woman who grew up thinking she was one of the boys.

Martin Drobac III bursts all over the stage with youthful energy, as the rock musician who wants to wed before the baby comes. But he also sounds as if he’s straining his voice to be heard over the band. As his mate, Darcie Roberts glows beautifully and sings “The Story Goes On” well, despite an intrusive choral background.

Sybille Pearson’s book isn’t nearly as good as the score, and its flaws are more glaring in such a blaring production. The youngest couple’s decision to have the baby needs a more probing dramatization. The oldest couple agonizes over the same issue, and then over other subjects--only to put aside the agonizing without much of a resolution, apparently in order to join in the happy ending.

The original Broadway production reportedly included a mixed-media presentation of pictures of fertilization and birth. None of that is here. It’s hard to say if the show would be strengthened by it. But the one birth that finally occurs on stage seems stinted and hurried, without any hint of why the word labor is used.

“Baby,” Golden Theatre, 139 N. San Fernando Road, Burbank ; Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 10. $18. (818) 841-9921. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.