`Plaid' is finger-snappin' summer fun.

Byline: Alan Beck For The Register-Guard

If these dog days of summer have you waiting anxiously for the next fundraising, Doo-Wop special on OPB, this delightful, frothy frappe at Cottage Theatre will more than satisfy your longing for the tight harmony and other-age innocence of those guy-groups of the fifties.

"Forever Plaid" opened Friday night to a rousing welcome from the nearly full house of first-nighters. It was a shamelessly adoring audience, eagerly tapping feet and softly singing along to the classic ballads.

If you are one of the few unfamiliar with Stuart Ross' "Forever Plaid" - after all, it's been playing in theaters everywhere for nearly 20 years - you certainly will be familiar with its mega-hit songs and sly references to many of the icons of the time such as "The Ed Sullivan Show," Perry Como, with even a nod to the Beatles.

The story is simplicity itself. In the manner of like musicals such as "Nunsense," the plot is really just a shallow excuse to string together all of these beautiful tunes. It offers just enough back story to let us relate to the fears and yearnings of these four guys with a modicum of talent, an abiding love of "that sound" and a big dream.

Four singers - the Plaids - are driving to their first big-break gig when their car is broadsided by a bus full of parochial virgins, Catholic schoolgirls on their way to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The girls all survive, but the four non-mop-top lads are flung into the great beyond until tonight.

Through a mysterious collision of unexplainable astral physics (and a widening hole in the ozone layer) the Plaids are returned to Earth to give the concert of their lives, thereby earning their plaid jackets.

The success of "Forever Plaid" rests entirely in the hands (and finger snaps) of this nerdish and nave quartet. The magic formula demands just the right combination of both charm and harmony. Directors Don Kelley and Peg Major have brought together an easygoing foursome with plenty of both, one of whom is Kelley himself.

The Plaids are (from left to right at the mikes) Frankie (Rob Rudeen), Jinx (Gerald Walters), Sparky (Earl Ruttencutter) and Smudge (Kelley). All four are local veterans of the musical stage and all four bring a surprising individual range to the demanding music. Musical Director (and performance pianist) Catricia Mayhue-Gill has the group shining both together and individually.

Acting honors for the evening go to Ruttencutter and Walters, who both mine as much character development out of the evening as the piece allows. Both have moments of fine high and low comedy as well as a few touching, heartfelt scenes. The comic work of Walters is particularly impressive. His Jinx can steal the show whether singing, as in his very funny transition from wallflower to super star in "Cry," or just sitting on a stool, as in his over the top backup rhythms as the Plaids go Calypso.

The pit band of piano (Mayhue-Gill), percussion (Walter Vanderhorst) and bass (Jeremy Heaven) is tight and well-balanced, never overwhelming and, from time to time, perfect Plaid pals for comic banter. But their great strength is the arrangements themselves. And what a range, everything from "Heart and Soul" and "Three Coins in a Fountain" to "Sixteen Tons" and "Love is a Many Splendored Thing."

The setting is perfectly low-key. Four mikes and four stools against a velour drop allow the imaginative props and costume pieces to grab focus. And when you add in some nice light projections, a mirror ball, a fog machine, chaser lights and a bubble machinea who needs more?

As one longtime theatergoer told me on the way out of the theater, "This is just what I needed tonight. A perfect summer tonic." I agree.

Secret reason to go: That frantic, three minute and 11 second version of a complete "Ed Sullivan Show" brimming with spinning plates, "Lady of Spain," Topo Gigio, opera, Groucho, performing seals, Jose Jimenez, Senor Wences ... I could go on!

Alan Beck, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, reviews theater for The Register-Guard.

Theater review

Forever Plaid

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays, though Aug. 17

Where: Cottage Theatre, 700 Village Drive, Cottage Grove

Tickets: $18 adults, $16 students and seniors (942-8001)