The cast, and some puppets, in "The Road to Qatar!" Photo by James Jamison.

From left: Brian Gonzales and Lee Zarrett. Photo by James Jamison.

Clockwise from bottom left: Bill Nolte, Brian Gonzales, Jill Abramovitz, Lee Zarrett, Bruce Warren. Photo by James Jamison.

  

The Road to Qatar

by David Krane (music); Stephen Cole (book and lyrics)

Presented by Lyric Stage

October 9 - 24

at Irving Arts Center
Dupree Theater
3333 North MacArthur Blvd.
Irving, TX 75062
972-252-2787

$23

8pm Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30pm Sundays & Oct. 24
Runtime: 105 minutes

For the creators of The Road to Qatar, the giddy little musical getting its world premiere at Irving’s Lyric Stage, a real-life deal to write a made-to-order spectacular for a Middle Eastern emir turned out not to be such a big break. Instead, it was more of a sheik-down.

So librettist Stephen Cole and composer David Krane took their awful showbiz safari experience from 2005 and turned it into this five-actor, 17-song caravan of musical comedy. Their silly-but-true saga follows the two struggling, unknown New York composers, called Michael and Jeffrey in the show, as they are hired to pen a lavish Disney-in-the-desert style opening event for the world’s largest indoor soccer stadium.

Problem One: The writers had never met before being hired via email. Two: The stadium was in a tiny Arab emirate. Three: The producer was a shady Egyptian who gave the pair six weeks to finish script, score and orchestral arrangements, with the promise of a big-money payoff at the end. (Guess whose check is still in the mail?)

If that sounds like the set-up of an old Hope and Crosby road picture, that’s exactly how Cole and Krane’s alter-egos onstage play it out. Actors Brian Gonzales and Lee Zarrett lock elbows and sing and clown up a storm as Michael and Jeffrey, the “two short Jews” dragged by the oily Egyptian (Bill Nolte) to Dubai, London, Bratislava and Qatar before the curtain finally rises on their ridiculously complicated show-within-the-show.

At Lyric there are hints of these locations on the spacious but simple unit set designed by Michael Bottari and Ronald Case (they also did the costumes). The glitz comes from the performances by the high-voltage quintet of seasoned pros, all with credits on Broadway and in national tours. Gonzales and Zarrett (both veterans of the recent Broadway production of Putnam County Spelling Bee) have the most work to do in selling the show’s up-tempo tunes and broad jokes with punch lines like “don’t ask, don’t Tel Aviv.” They’re terrific, particularly Gonzales, who has snazzmatazz comic timing and gets to show off his talent for mimicking celebs such as Sean Connery and William Shatner.

Nolte makes a nifty comic villain as the shifty producer. Jill Abramowitz plays all the women’s roles, from a sexy flight attendant to a starstruck assistant who develops the hots for the one of the American guys (the gay one, unfortunately for her). Bruce Warren dives in and out of costumes to play the pageant’s swishy Italian director and its star, an Arab movie idol who keeps trying to rewrite the script.

There’s an old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley bounce to Krane’s melodies throughout. Even the song titles—“Good Things Come in Threes,” “Give ’Em What They Want,” “Oh, What a Show!”—sound like standards from Broadway standbys of the 1950s. That’s all dandy stuff. It’s only in the last third of this 105-minute musical where things start to get bumpy with a few too many gags about terrorists. But even with some rough spots, The Road to Qatar offers miles of smiles.

Go to Dallas Observer online to read the rest of this column, which includes reviews of breathe at Uptown Players and Evil Dead: The Musical at The Dallas Hub Theater.