'Bullets Over Broadway' a sheer, shameless good time

NEW YORK — The American woman who rescued the Broadway musical from mopey foreign interlopers in the late 20th century has returned — and this time, she's left an actual body count.

Though director/choreographer Susan Stroman has helmed a number of buoyant revivals and exhilarating original works, she's probably best known for 2001's The Producers. So it's fitting that the show that may well prove her biggest hit since then was also adapted from a beloved film comedy: Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen's 1994 caper about a young playwright who gets entangled with the Mob.

Allen, who wrote the screenplay with Douglas McGrath, crafted the libretto himself, incorporating priceless lines from the film and making already outsized characters, such as the aging diva Helen Sinclair and the mouthy moll Olive Neal, play to the back rows. Unlike Producers' Mel Brooks, Allen did not feel compelled to write an original score; instead, Bullets (* * * ½ out of four stars), which opened Thursday at the St. James Theatre, incorporates the kind of traditional pop tunes that lend so much flavor to his movies — with occasional, clever twists provided in additional lyrics by Glen Kelly.

But it's Stroman who makes this baby sing and dance, not just literally but spiritually. The playful wit and exuberance that were stifled by the material in her last Main Stem outing, Big Fish, are in full force here, and are supported by performers and designers (among the latter the great William Ivey Long, whose costumes are especially scrumptious) who seem to never run out of steam.

Zach Braff brings the right neurotic charm to the role of David Shayne, the scribe who is persuaded to forsake his high-minded ideals and let gangster Nick Valenti (an ideally cast Vincent Pastore) produce his play. But Braff is not — by appearances, at least — the hardest-working member of this company. In an early scene, he is upstaged by one Heléne Yorke, playing Nick's girl, Olive.

Onscreen, Jennifer Tilly gave Olive, whom David is forced to cast in his drama, a distinctly husky voice and memorable dizziness. Yorke has amped things up considerably, so that by the end of her second number, The Hot Dog Song — in which Stroman has her belt, growl, bump and grind, at times simultaneously — you fear she'll need medical assistance.

The excellent Nick Cordero is a cooler presence, but equally energetic and adroit, as Cheech, the hit man who becomes David's unlikely creative savior. Marin Mazzie exerts herself less physically, but brings her own distinct comedic hauteur to Helen, a part that would have seemed to belong forever to Dianne Wiest, and Brooks Ashmanskas makes a dazzlingly droll Warner Purcell, character actor and relentless nosher.

Stroman includes deft smaller touches as well — watch Ashmanskas' Warner silently circle the catering table as his colleagues rehearse — and the overstatement never grates, because it is executed with such vibrant style and without any of the self-consciousness or snark that have marred other stabs at musical comedy in recent years.

In fact, while things may not end happily for a few of its characters, Bullets offers as much sheer, shameless fun as any show you'll see this season.