‘Light Up the Sky’ sparkles for NCT

After years of mindless laughs, he was going for depth.

What lights up a Northampton stage, in the New Century Theatre's current production of Hart's comedy, is the depth of the roster of players this company assembled.

The theater is packing a week of old-home days through Sunday, when the last showing of "Light Up the Sky" will close the company's 11th season. For the rest of this week, people who've supported New Century through its previous 34 productions can get a load of the fun that's left in those old bones.

Producing director Sam Rush says he and the company's co-founder, Jack Neary, long ago resolved to make acting with their company an enjoyable experience for their casts, regardless of the trauma a storyline put them through. Actors who were a pain didn't return. Of course, Rush and Neary had audiences in mind as well. But you have to tend to business back stage.

That good karma is paying back. A slew of returning stars revels in the fun of portraying Moss Hart's crazy constellation of personalities.

The production lampoons theater that takes itself too seriously without for a second making that mistake itself.

"Light Up the Sky" is a funny play whose smart-alecky charm holds up, more than 50 years after Hart wrote it. In that time, of course, lots has happened. I was born. Good taste has eroded. And television comedy squats greedily over this ground.

Neary, who directs, sets the way-back machine to Hart's debonair era, before the agony of "Hart to Hart" and all the dreck that's spoiled people for the better and smarter fun that situations presented, before situation comedy.

Neary's production revives a brightness and a lightness that's perfect for this ensemble, whose members include Phil Kilbourne, Cate Damon, James Emery, Buzz Roddy, Wes Talbot and Lisa Abend.

Abend plays the glamorous actress, Irene Livingston, who's about to open in the new play, after her afternoon massage and her ritualistic evening toasts. Her mother, played tartly by Ellen Colton, managed to sneak into the closed dress rehearsal, hidden under a scrubwoman's headdress, and discovered that the play's a disaster.

Or is it?

Between the play's end that night, and the arrival of the reviews, at 3 a.m., all that's been wagered on the success of the play - in money and dreams - gets a good shaking out.

As Rush notes, the main characters are theater-world icons: the star, the producer, the temperamental, tear-prone director, the untried young author. New Century veterans Kilbourne, Damon and Roddy take those stock roles and fill them to overflowing with personality.

Getting people to laugh at a work this dated isn't a matter of punching the lines. Neary's cast immediately builds the goodwill the audience needs to take this in the right spirit.

I suspect it helps that they know and like each other off stage. Some have played roles in which they dislike one another, as in last year's "Noises Off." At the show I saw Saturday, they were having a lot of fun, even after a lighting snafu delayed the opening. Kilbourne expertly wiped away any residues with an early ad lib about faulty lighting.

Neary may well have told his cast, performing in the bigger Theatre 14 at Smith College, to make these characters extra big.

Roddy gives us a producer that huffs and puffs as heartily as the late Jackie Gleason. He browbeats the young playwright, whose work he's backed to the tune of $300,000. (That's 1948 dollars, mind you.) Roddy winds up repeatedly for some of the biggest comic deliveries you'll see on an area stage this summer.

Kilbourne is the yin to Roddy's yang - slender, existential and self-indulgent. His crying jags punctuate the plot. Kilbourne's ability to let his face show everything is on view this time, unlike others roles, as in thrillers, in which he's able to conceal everything.

Cate Damon, who plays the producer's wife, knows both how to make money, as a professional ice-skater, and how to spend it. She enters the suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, where all the action takes place, showing off a new ring and new clothing. She seems hungry for a show, regardless of what's at stake, until she confesses that half of the grubstake for the new play is her own. Damon's eyes dance through the play with infectious pleasure.

Tary Coppola is appealing as the earnest soul who has signed on to help Miss Livingston write her autobiography. Both she and the young playwright, played with an aw-shucks honesty by Patrick Tangredi, help bracket the play with behavior normal enough to keep the whole thing from spinning off, like a wayward firework.

James Emery, who Neary praises in his playbill notes as "the most reliable actor on the planet," is smooth and graceful as the experienced playwright who drops in for a drink. He's charming. The essential thing he adds to this comic mix may be no more complicated than his ability to look really '40s.

In three small roles that include a Swedish masseur and a drunken Shriner, David Cline adroitly sprinkles on more comedy.

What tickles the fancy, all the way through, isn't some ponderously allegorical drama that may or may not be any good. It's funny. We laugh. That's Hart.

"Light Up the Sky" runs through Aug. 12. Tickets are $18, or $16 for seniors, and can be bought by calling 585-3220. Performances are at 8 p.m., except for a 3 p.m. Sunday matinee.

For this show, staged in Theatre 14 in the Mendenhall Center for Performing Arts at Smith College, anyone who buys three tickets can get a fourth for free.

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