STAGE REVIEW : LOS ANGELES THE STAR OF ‘BACK HOME’

A new little musical has crept into town on little cat feet, but it roars like a lion cub. It’s playful, it’s wet behind the ears, it’s sharp, collegiate and brash. And when its well-scrubbed company of six extols the virtues of L.A. with “What a place to grow up. . . . Hope we do it soon,� you know you’ve stumbled onto something fresh.

Fresh it is, in all senses. “Back Home� at the Cast is a benignly impudent, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed musical about L.A. today, in the live center of the ‘80s--�a cross between Detroit and Brigadoon.�

As you can see, it’s innocent and savvy both, part Dorothy from Kansas and part Hard Rock Cafe. This Dorothy’s name is Pat (as in Patricia Briody, a gifted singer from Chicago), and she comes to Los Angeles to make a good life for herself, “like Mary Tyler Moore.�

Ah, but in the egomania capital of the world, nobody listens--nobody, that is, except the Dragon sisters, June and Havoc (Earlene Davis and Dee Dee Rescher), who gleefully rent her the world’s worst apartment at the world’s most outlandish price. (Croons Pat: “Is this the way that life works out for Mary Tyler Moore?�)

Eventually she finds her prince and, let’s face it, the threadbare premise of this mini-musical is merely an excuse on which to hang a snappy collection of songs (bouncy music and funny lyrics by Kirby Tepper) that seize the spirit of this town at the height of its supremely sappy, superficial age.

It has its traditional rogues (ballet teachers with buns in their hair, exquisitely self-centered actors) and not-so-traditional rogues: the beatific sales couple at the Bodhi Tree (where Pat goes in search of “real� people), the denizens of Canter’s and Will Rogers Park, and Spago’s Wolfgang Puck.

“Back home� also touches on ethnicity with some hilarious “Trouble With the Language� at the hands of Consuelo (Davis), Ascension (composer/lyricist Tepper) and Jesus (Carl Packard) and on such uniquely local mores as “Riding Around� on the freeways (Rescher, Tepper, Packard, Davis, Briody, and Cameron Smith in a masterful demolition derby).

For still more exotic native breeds, note the Valley girl at the bus stop (Davis, a hoot in a Valley-speak monologue) and Ms. Beverly Wilshire (Rescher)--Beverly to her friends--who ventures east of Rodeo only when she’s on the prowl for adventure.

Above all, though, “Back Home� introduces us to a shiny new generation of talent that knows better than to take itself too seriously, but also knows to be serious about the fun that it needs to project.

Briskly directed by Robert Schrock (who also contributed the aptly vacant book with Tepper), “Back Home� benefits from simplicity in its staging: the energetic solo piano of musical director Lloyd Cooper, a bare-bones black-box set by Randy J. Clifton, functional lights by Ilya Mindlin and--especially--vividly colored costumes by Eleanor Hedge. Reynaldo Duran’s choreography remains wisely basic; in a space as tiny as the Cast, less is always a better idea.

What “Back Home� lacks in stylistic breakthroughs, it makes up for in vigor, ability and good sense. Its ingratiating performers are an artistic hybrid of yuppie, reminding this theatergoer of another, very different bright generation: the Company Theatre in its irreverent heyday of the early ‘70s.

The targets have changed, heaven knows, but the good-natured spoofing is the same. And when was the last time you saw Los Angeles starred in a musical?

Performances at 804 N. El Centro Ave. in Hollywood run Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 10 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Until April 20 (213-462-0265).