'WALTZ' TAKES WELCOME TURN AT PASADENA PLAYHOUSE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

As the fractured couples of ``Do I Hear a Waltz?'' pair off for a precurtain-call spin, the mood is finally, uncomplicatedly festive, setting a tone the previous couple of hours do not - and should not - establish. It's a rare false step in an otherwise excellent evening. Director David Lee obviously knows what ``Waltz'' is all about, but the temptation for a final ``send 'em out beaming'' jolt may simply have been too much to resist. Nobody wants the last memory of a Venetian holiday to be rainstorms and bickering.

The handsome revival of ``Do I Hear a Waltz?'' that opened Sunday at the Pasadena Playhouse is richly entertaining, but make it a date night at your peril. Here's a musical that dangles moonlight, Puccini and gondola rides tantalizingly under its characters' noses only to yank the string back with a cautionary ``uh-uh!'' whenever they get too close to romantic idealism.

Small wonder that original 1965 audiences expecting flowers and valentines from Richard Rodgers - the man who wrote ``Some Enchanted Evening'' - didn't always find this jawbreaker appetizing. Too small and skewed for Broadway, ``Do I Hear a Waltz?'' may not have found an audience the first time around, but this revival demonstrates there's plenty that should be seen.

With a score by Rodgers and a book adapted by Arthur Laurents from his play ``The Time of the Cuckoo,'' ``Waltz'' most significantly bears the imprint of its lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, who would put an even darker face on romance with ``Company.'' Forget ``Waltz's'' perky title and the locale. We're dealing with some bitterness here.

How's this for a role sheet: Our romance-seeking heroine, Leona, is an alcoholic, plain-Jane secretary with zero sense of self-worth. Her handsome paramour is married. Eddie and Jennifer, the attractive younger couple staying at Leona's pensione, are splitting apart while Fioria, the pensione keeper, is only too happy to help complete the process. This may be amore, but it sure is prickly.

Still, under the pastel sky and moon-swept canals (fashioned by frequent Oscars designer Roy Christopher and lighted to the Impressionistic nines by Michael Gilliam), a kind of realization is possible even when love isn't. When Leona Samish (Alyson Reed) arrives in Venice at the bucolic Pensione Fioria, camera in hand, heart at the ready, she belts out ``Somebody Woke Up'' and believes every word of it. By the play's end, somebody has indeed awakened, and Leona has learned that when you dance in fountains, you get soaked.

Lee meshes the play's shifting elements with an amazing delicacy. Consider the ballad ``Moon in My Window,'' begun by hopefully blind Jennifer Yeager (Annie Wersching), picked up by the cynical Fioria (Carol Lawrence) and continued by Leona, whose mindset is somewhere in between. The song nudges them into blissful, three-part harmony. Equally well-handled is ``Here We Are Again,'' where Leona - newly arrived and left alone - essentially serenades her wine glass.

A kind of romance is available to Leona if she can just get out of her own way. An antique-store owner named Di Rossi (played without snake oil by a golden-voiced Anthony Crivello) is interested, but he wants things to be less complicated than Leona is willing to accept. It's a credit to Laurents that ``Waltz's'' plot and bittersweet ending don't hinge on questions or morals or the ability for people from different cultures to see eye to eye. If Leona and Di Rossi, Jennifer and Eddie are going to make it, it's going to take more than a gondola ride or Puccini aria to carry them through.

Leona's no picnic, and Reed's performance doesn't try to make her heroic. Here is a character who would rather dispense martinis than spread bitterness, but even she has her limits. Reed - a long way from her ``A Chorus Line'' days - may be all rough edges, but when she falls in love, it's a believable transformation. Ever the musical theater pro, Lawrence lobs Fioria's verbal darts with great accuracy: ``I often wonder what would have happened to Romeo and Juliet - if they had not died.''

Some screechy microphones on opening night notwithstanding, the Pasadena Playhouse's new sound system should help make the Playhouse tackle musicals even more ambitious than ``Waltz'' with greater ease. As it is, music director Steve Orich's 16-piece orchestra sounds terrific, giving a neglected musical score a much-needed second listen.

``DO I HEAR A WALTZ?''

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Aug. 19.

Tickets: $20 to $60. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Photo:

Fioria, played by stage veteran Carol Lawrence, center, hangs on Eddie (Benjamin Sprunger), with Giovanna (Tina Gasbarra) looking on, in ``Do I Hear a Waltz?''

Sarah Reingewirtz/Staff Photographer!