STAGE REVIEW : She Knows Her Way ‘On the Boulevard’

“I hope you understand French,� teases Liliane Montevecchi at the top of her solo show, “On the Boulevard,� at the Pasadena Playhouse. Actually, it’s even more fun if you don’t.

One of Montevecchi’s songs, an old one by Cole Porter, makes the distinction between Paris, a city in France, and “Paree,� where everybody is always in love. It’s this second, imaginary place that Montevecchi sings about.

Her voice is not so much, a bit of a bray, and the songs aren’t new (“Autumn Leaves,� “La Vie en Rose,� “If You Go Away,� etc. So what’s so special?

Illusion, my friend. Based on reality, as the best illusions are. Montevecchi believes in “Paree,� at least for the purposes of this show, and she makes us believe it.

She starts by disarming us. Knowing that she has starred with the Folies Bergere and on Broadway (“Nine�), we expect her to be a French bombshell, with maximum feathers and furs.

What we get is a skinny young woman with cropped reddish hair, wearing a long black sweater and black stockings, the very image of the Paris shop girl who dresses like a million dollars on a next-to-zero budget.

She is not what we expected, this gamin, but she is charming. And as we look more closely, we can see that the child is not 19 at all. She’s 29. But as fresh, amused and hopeful as when she first came to Paris. Even more charming.

In the second act, Montevecchi adds a cloche and puts on a few more years. Now she is not so hopeful as when she first came to Paris. But she is still interested in how it is all going to come out. And she is much more experienced than the shop girl. Oh, much more.

All this is the show’s visual subtext, not necessarily tied to what Montevecchi is saying or singing at any given moment. (There are songs of experience in the first act and comic songs in the second.) But the subtext gives us a ground of physical belief that is missed when Americans do this material, even when they do it well, as in the Playhouse’s production of “Jacques Brel Is...� last season.

You don’t have to have the language to perform these songs, but you do have to have the body language. Montevecchi was born to it, and strengthens it with a dancer’s line. You also have to have the proper attitude to do these songs. You have to convey the realistic shrug to be found at the bottom of all French ballads. Love is hell, but life goes on. Montevecchi’s philosophy in a nutshell.

She has another quality that one associates with the French. She knows how to make her guests at the Playhouse’s little Balcony Theatre feel welcome. It’s not simply a matter of vamping the gentlemen, which she does in the second act. It’s the ability to be happy at one’s own party--to be convinced that it is indeed the best one in town.

Montevecchi did a show in New York Saturday night, did another one in San Francisco Sunday afternoon and made us feel that these were just warm-ups for the weekend’s real business--to entertain her wonderful friends in Pasadena. The great hostess knows how to lie.

Beyond the illusion, how much performing talent is involved in all this? Well, as in her costumes, Montevecchi makes a little go a long way. She doesn’t take you very deeply into her material, but French cafe songs aren’t deep: They reflect a mood that will pass with the next round. She knows this, and knows that 90 minutes (with intermission) is long enough for a party of this sort to run. Thrift--another French virtue. “On the Boulevard� is just what it ought to be.

Plays Tuesdays-Fridays at 8:30 p.m., Saturdays at 5:50 and 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Closes Feb. 25. Tickets $17- $25. 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. (818) 356-PLAY.