PUTTING THE SHIMMY AND SHAKE IN 'SUGAR'

Most people know "Sugar" better in the form of the movie "Some Like It Hot" and its all-star cast of Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. "Sugar" is a light comedy that includes tap-dancing gangsters, cross-dressing musicians (hardly anything new or old) and plenty of songs.

Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators is an "all-girl" band bound from Chicago to Florida for sun and the possibilities presented by rich old men. When two young men on the run from gangsters join the band incognito, the stage is set for hijinx, music-making and love.

Getting '90s college students to express '30s sexiness is the name of the game at this point in the University Theatre production's evolution.

"Sugar" opens at 8 p.m. Friday at the Forrest H. Rose Theatre, with performances Saturday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and a final performance at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 7.

Onstage during a recent rehearsal at the Rose Theatre, musical directors Dr. Christopher Goeke and Dr. Elizabeth James-Gallagher wanted more credibility from their singers.

The male chorus's take on the lecherous line "We must have naughty young girls" wasn't convincing Goeke. "You don't have to be an old man to find this motivation," he suggested.

Down front, director Dennis Seyer demonstrated how freshman Laura Huusko could put a little more wiggle in her hips and some more pizzazz into a kiss Sugar is supposed to throw.

Huuska's voice and blond perkiness won her the Marilyn Monroe role. It's voluptuousness Seyer's trying to draw out.

"I feel so silly because I'm used to this," she says, motioning at her Pointfest 2 T-shirt and camouflage jeans and slouching against a wall.

"... I had never thought of myself as sexy."

Huuska, a Carlisle, Ill., native, is a voice performance major and a proud member of the Chicks with Sticks in the Golden Eagles drum line. They'll be in the front row rooting for her opening night.

The challenge of portraying the musical's vivacious sensuality isn't Huuska's alone. Choreographer Dr. Marc Strauss, who had been schooling some dancers in the lobby, got onstage and put the issue into perspective for the choruses.

"This was the era of flappers," he said. "... Dancers were very hippy and busty. You have to go far beyond what you imagined sexiness is. That is consistent with this era."

He suggested to the dancers that they must shimmy and shake "beyond your wildest nightmares."

Seyer thinks the difficulty is that, unlike the 1930s, males and females don't think of themselves as completely different from each other now.

"There's not that wide a gap anymore," he said.

The male leads of Joe and Jerry, musicians who dress as women to avoid gangsters, are being played by Scott Krietemeyer and George Aplin, respectively.

Another young student with a big challenge in this production is assistant director-stage manager Melissa Grote. Grote was the stage manager on last year's "Dancing at Lughnasa."

She is in charge of shepherding a cast of 33 through 16 scene changes and about half that number of set changes during the musical. One quick set change transforms the stage from train berths to a hotel veranda in Florida. "That has to be done one, two, three," Grote said.

Grote is a sophomore theater education major who has acted in the past but chooses not to be on stage.

"I prefer being back here and being in charge," she said.