City of Angels

With a jazzy score and a truly witty script that both sends up and lovingly recreates film noir tropes, such as the hard boiled detective and sultry femme fatale, City of Angels is a delight for any audience.

It's also a beast of a show for any theatre company, with heavy technical demands, rat-a-tat dialogue that requires a style as specific as Shakespeare, and the requirement for most cast members to play two roles each. The Lyric Stage puts on a good, capable production, but its uneven embrace of film noir style means this "City" is never great.

Fade in on Hollywood in the 1940s, where novelist Stine is working on the screenplay of his novel about private eye Stone. While Stine battles a wife that holds him to high standards and a producer who is driving the script to the lowest common denominator, Stone tries to find a missing rich girl and stay one step ahead of some goons who don't want her found.

As Stone, Ed Hoopman is perfect, with a basso voice that easily navigating the rapid dialogue and a profile that evokes Dick Tracy. When he and Leigh Barrett, as loyal secretary Oolie, bat the bon mots back and forth like a tennis ball, the show is a zippy delight.

Hoopman and Barrett are examples of getting the style right -- Barrett's sassy rendition of the ode to the other woman, "You Can Always Count on Me," is a highlight. Credit too to John Malinowski for evocative lighting and to Matt Whiton for sets that establish the black and white world of the film and the colorful real world while managing to fit on the Lyric's tiny stage.

But then there are some inexplicable wrong notes. Alaura (Samantha Richert), the obligatory femme fatale, smolders in her spoken scenes, but has thin voice. And what causes Stone to comment on her tan and legs (twice) when costumer Elisabetta Polito covers her to the floor?

Some actors can handle their dual parts: J.T. Turner is confidently oily as the comically double talking movie producer Buddy Fidler, then amps up the Borscht belt flair as a seedy fictional mogul. But there are actors who are partially miscast. Jennifer Ellis has the stylish intelligence for Gaby, Stine's wife and screenwriter; but her refined soprano isn't nearly torchy enough when she sings "With Every Breath I Take" as Stone's gal Bobby in her club act.

The specific music styles of "City of Angels" also elude others in the cast. The "Angel City 4," scatting their way through the overture and tackling a host of other tricky numbers, all hit the right notes; but members Andrew Tung and Brandon Milardo miss the vibe, singing too straight and not emulating the brass instruments their parts mimic in "Everybody's Gotta Be Somewhere." On the other hand, the ladies in the quartet, Sarah Kornfeld and Elisa Arsenault, successfully navigate tight harmonies and get that saxophone feel on the same song.

Phil Tayler as author Stine is somewhere in the middle -- a strong voice that can easily handle the wide range the part demands and niftily making his turtle-like visage (must be the glasses) charming enough to make him sympathetic despite the adultery the part calls for; but there's something missing. Tayler and Hoopman don't generate the chemistry their reverse negative images require. That might be because director Spiro Veloudos too often literally has them on different levels (hey, you gotta fit this show on the Lyric stage somehow).

Veloudos also doesn't drive these two actors to draw a sharp enough difference between the real life Stine and the fictional Stone. This gives Tayler a little less to work with. It also makes Stine's anger and Stone's disgust at the mangling of the detective novel have less impact.

And it's impact that Lyric's "City of Angels" lacks, with weaker aspects lessening the effect of the show's strong points.

City of Angels continues through May 2 at the Lyric Stage in Boston. For more info you can go to the theatre's website (lyricstage.com).