There's an idea behind Smokey Joe's Cafe - do as many Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller rock and roll songs as you possibly can in two hours - but there isn't really a concept. That's why director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Joey McKneely will give some numbers a theatrical "story," while the rest of the time they'll drop any pretense of an overall style and just let the talented cast step out and sing. This can be frustrating; when a fully staged sequence works, we start to wonder what the non-choreographed numbers might have been if someone had begun thinking more creatively. Then again, maybe Stephen Helper and Jack Viertel, who had the original concept for this rhythmic pastiche, learned a lesson from the critically - and commercially - disappointing Five Guys Named Moe -- that no story can be better than a stupid one. As an evening's entertainment, Smokey Joe doesn't really start to happen until seven songs in, when the men form a fun quartet, bouncing from the train song "Keep On Rollin'" into the night's most rollicking tune, "Searchin'" (aka "Gonna Find Her").
Of course, each performer gets a moment (or two or three) in the spotlight, with DeLee Lively shimmying better than anyone's sister Kate and another cast-member spurning her beau with the original lyrics to "Hound Dog." Alas, several performers spend the last fifteen minutes trying to out-LaBelle each other, which is impressive, if not particularly endearing, to amp-ambushed ears. Musically and choreographically, Smokey Joe falls considerably short of the irresistibly syncopated Allen Toussaint revue from 1992, High Rollers. But that was a commercial failure; Smokey's lighter, brighter, and has the dubious distinction of being, besides Sunset Boulevard, the only major "new" musical of its season. Leiber and Stoller's famous lyric aside, the neon lights are not so bright on Broadway.
