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THEATER REVIEW OCT's Ginger Rogers tribute sparkles MailTribune.com Writer Posted Sep. 14, 2014 @ 2:00 am Posted Sep. 14, 2014 @ 2:00 am » Social News In Lynnette Barkley and Christopher McGovern's "Backwards in High Heels," Ginger Rogers is as plucky as one of those 1930s Hollywood heroines whose dramatic arc her real-life story resembles. And in the production that opened Friday night at Oregon Cabaret Theatre, energetically directed and choreographed by long-time OCT favorite Christopher George Patterson, Kelsey Stalter, who plays Rogers, has pluck and the sparkle to go with the singing and dancing chops. In addition to rounding up a lot of great songs (the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern), "Backwards in High Heels," has the virtue of more or less following Rogers' actual life, and perhaps burnishing it up a bit. As you think you're merely kicking back to enjoy flashy tap routines to the likes of "Fascinating Rhythm" or the old court and spark to a ballad like "Embracable You," you're also following the journeys, outer and inner, of a little Texas schoolgirl's climb to Hollywood stardom. At the outset, Ginger (she got the nickname "Ginga" from a little cousin who couldn't say her given name, Virginia) is a precocious 15-year-old living with her mother, Leta (a stalwart Renee Hewitt), in Fort Worth, Texas. Ginger has stardust in her eyes ("Hollywood's such a swell place!"), but Leta, who worked as a writer in Tinseltown for two years, says show biz is no place for a young lady. She wants Ginger to grow up someplace normal — like Texas. Ginger's first break comes when Eddie Foy's traveling Vaudeville show needs a stand-in, and Ginger wins the Charleston contest that puts her on the road at age 15 in 1926. It was on this tour on the old Orpheum circuit, although it's not mentioned in the play, that the real Rogers danced at a new theater in Medford called The Craterian. "Backwards in High Heels" brims with Gershwin classics such as "Fascinating Rhythm," "A Fine romance," "I Got Rhythm" and "Embracable you" and Irving Berlin favorites like "Let's Face the Music and Dance." Patterson's choreography has his dancers, up to six at a time, flying elegantly around the OCT's small-ish stage to the music.   There are also new songs ("Tame These Feet," "The Domesticity," "The Art of Sport") written by McGovern in the style of Tin Pan Alley tunes of the day. Sometimes as she's dancing, Stalter shows the extra gear that a performer such as Rogers was able to go to, looking out at the audience from behind the routine, the wig and all the rest as if to say, ain't we got fun? This connection with the audience, and the relishing of it, marked off a star from of a mere chorus hoofer. The songs have been shuffled in time to suit Ginger's story. Thus, 1936's "A Fine Romance" comes early, as young Ginger develops a crush on Jack, an over-age chorus boy with gin on his breath and a mirror image of her absent father, while 1930's "They All Laughed" pops up several years later, when Ginger has finally made it to Hollywood. All this is framed by projection engineer Mitch Weisbrod's electronic wizardry. We see the real Ginger doing the backwards-in-high-heels thing with her dance partner, Fred Astaire. In one nifty bit of stagecraft, actors chase each other behind a large screen at the rear of the stage, whereupon they appear on the screen in an old movie in a continuation of the chase. The controlling Leta, who acts as her daughter's manager, tells Ginger, who has so far appeared in the movies in small roles, that she's getting a dance duet in her next picture. With whom? "I don't know, Fred somebody ... " Act two opens with a montage of images of the real Rogers as Ginger's star rises. When she tells Leta, in a sign of her growing independence, that she's getting a new agent, Leta wants to know who it is. "William Morris," Ginger says. Rogers' personal life as a serial monogamist (five divorces) is cleverly encapsulated in Irving Berlin's "Change Partners." As Ginger comes into her own, there are clashes with both Leta and with Astaire, with whom she made a string of legendary pictures in the 1930s. Against Leta's advice, Rogers takes the role of Kitty Foyle in the Academy Award-winning move of that name. She demands the studio pay her $3,000 a week and 10 percent of the gross, showing the moxie that made her a sort of proto-feminist in patriarchal Hollywood. Amusing cameos pop up. A brassy Ethel Merman (Christie Dabreau) has a sort of on-stage cutting contest with young Ginger. In Hollywood there are funny appearances by Kate Hepburn (Dabreau), Jimmy Stewart (Robert Arthur Altman), Bette Davis (Tim Fuchs), Marlene Dietrich (Hewitt) and of course Astaire (John Ramsey). Put it all on Craig Hudson's fabulous, vintage stage and you have a lavish spectacle with a surprising bit of depth. "Backwards in High Heels" is the first production to open at OCT since the death of founder Jim Giancarlo, who perhaps is smiling somewhere. On opening night, a flower arrangement he would have liked was tucked away in a little alcove in the rear of the theater, along with a photo of Giancarlo. Reach freelance writer Bill Varble at [email protected]. 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