"Ya Got Trouble" is entertaining with a capital "E"

Mark Sparks' and Bob DeDea's "Ya Got Trouble" is a bounteous if bittersweet tribute to the dynamic actor Robert Preston, for many a beloved performer.

Sparks — whose previous credits include his own take on Preston's signature role as voluble con man Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" — is a force of nature as the bustling yet graceful star of stage and screen. Without straining to look or sound like Preston, Sparks leaves a golden and familiar impression of the late actor through his contrapuntal, masculine performance: bursts of energy offset by tenderness, and snappy enunciation of hard consonants ("Trouble with a capital 'T' ... ") balanced by soothing, musical stretches of soft vowels.

The script by DeDea (based on a story developed with Sparks) leads us to the late Preston's afterlife, where the consummate performer drops by a cluttered, backstage set full of memorabilia and old costumes from his varied career.

Accompanied by a longtime friend, pianist Jimmy Davidson (played by Jim Fisher), Preston takes us down memory lane through songs and anecdotes. (Most of the latter, apparently, are excerpted from old interviews with the star or from recollections gathered from such colleagues as Gregory Peck and John Cullum.)

Preston dishes about showbiz legends with whom he crossed paths. Legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille was a talented director of spectacle, but not much else, Preston says. Ray Bolger might have played Harold Hill had he not requested an unlikely spot in the show for his "Where's Charley?" hit song, "Once In Love With Amy."

Portions of nearly 30 songs weave through the story, including the obvious ("76 Trombones"), the lesser-known ("I Marry You" from "We Take the Town," which closed before reaching Broadway), the novel ("Chicken Fat," a recorded song written by Willson to promote physical fitness) and the gorgeous ("My Cup Runneth Over," from "I Do, I Do"). But "Ya Got Trouble," directed by Rita Giomi, isn't nostalgia for its own sake.

Much of what the play concerns is the way an actor copes with changing fortunes, and how such vicissitudes mirror other ups and downs in a life, notably his marriage.

Preston's wife, the actress Catherine Craig, seems to have put up with a fair amount of her spouse's philandering, as he tells it. Though he pines for her in his spectral place, this Preston isn't through grappling with the things that make marriage hard — certainly harder, he suggests, than earning an audience's sweet appreciation.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com