A Walk On The Moon ★★★

A Walk on the Moon is a musical set during the summer of 1969 and, in many ways, it’s ideal for the current season: charming, breezy, and never overly taxing.

That’s likely sufficient for a sizable portion of the theatergoing public, especially those who remember the first moon landing and the legendary Woodstock festival that followed a month later, but more discerning — and gulp, younger — audience members may pine for more plot and emotional depth.

Inspired by the 1999 film starring Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, and Liev Schreiber, this musical adaptation has a book and additional lyrics by original screenwriter Pamela Gray, with music and lyrics by AnnMarie Milazzo, and they’ve created a likable show that zips through its 2.5-hour running time but leaves little lasting impression, like a mojito with too much ice and not enough rum. The songs (especially “We’re Girls With Somethin’ To Do”) and the Catskills setting are fun, but once everyone starts singing and dancing, comparisons to Dirty Dancing become inevitable, and you may find yourself wishing for Baby and Johnny to enter and perform their climactic lift to raise this show’s constant medium temperature.

Talia Suskauer plays Pearl Kantrowitz, a young Brooklyn housewife and mother who got pregnant at 16 and comes to realize that she now wants more than she’s got: a hard-working, dedicated spouse, two children, and an apartment in Flatbush. The world is undergoing seismic changes, so why can’t she? She sings to the sky in “When Did You Know The Moon Was Possible?” and asks an unseen Neil Armstrong, “And as I watch you fly/Is there still time for me to try?”

Armstrong may not hear her, but the universe does. Enter “The Blouse Man”, Walker Jerome (Sam Gravitte, suitably hunky, sensitive, and long-haired), who gets Pearl to buy a tie-dye shirt that later becomes the catalyst for this show’s central conflict, when Pearl’s husband Marty (Max Chernin) casually dismisses her new purchase: “Where’d you even find that?”

After that disappointment, Pearl starts disappearing from her cabin for hours at a time, all to tryst with the hipper, hotter Walker, whose name only underlines what most of this show’s characters do: walk. They walk to conduct affairs, to get away from their family members when angry, and to get offstage when they’re no longer needed for the story, usually under the guise of getting knishes or sweets.

Director Sheryl Kaller keeps the cast moving around Tal Yarden’s efficient set (his video work here is particularly strong) at a nice clip, but that’s not enough, and neither she nor the show’s two writers embrace the story’s most compelling question: What do you do when you find yourself in love with more than one person?

A Walk on the Moon largely sidesteps that complexity, leaving most of the actors working hard to do their best with lukewarm material. Only one actor manages to fully bring his character to vivid life: Oscar Williams as Ross Kaplan, the resort’s 16-year-old guitarist who aspires to be the “Big Jewish Hendrix”. Williams fills the stage with vitality and infectious enthusiasm, and every scene without him feels a little less alive.