City Center's Encores! series' season opened with George and Ira Gershwin's "Girl Crazy" (1930), a (mostly) feel-good Depression era musical, with book by Guy Bolton and Jack McGowan, which introduced Ethel Merman to Broadway and brought her overnight stardom. It is the show that gave us such standards as "I Got Rhythm," Merman's hit, and "Embraceable You" and "But Not for Me," which originally featured Ginger Rogers, and we heard these in quick succession in the rousing potpourri overture, led by Rob Fisher. Jerry Zaks directed, Warren Carlyle choreographed, and John Lee Beatty (sets), William Ivey Long (costumes), and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting) were responsible for designs. The Encores! "Girl Crazy" played for five performances between November 19 and 22 and I heard the penultimate one, on the evening of the 21st.

The plot, a slender framework to hang the songs on-even Merman deemed it "only an excuse for the comedy and musical numbers" in her 1978 autobiography-hinges on the East versus West conflict-not the Middle or Far East versus America or Europe, but East Coast city slickers versus Old West cowboys and -girls. Danny Churchill (Chris Diamantopoulos), with New York so ingrained in him that he takes a taxi, driven by Gieber Goldfarb (Wayne Knight), from Manhattan to Custerville, Arizona, converts lazy Buzzard's Ranch into Danny's Dude Ranch, a bustling enterprise, intended to lure others away from the lights of Broadway. Molly Gray (Becki Newton), the local postmistress, who packs a mean pistol, catches Danny's eye, but she resists him-until she doesn't. Feuding couple Frisco Kate (Ana Gasteyer), a singer, and Slick Follicle (Marc Kudisch), who knows how to run a casino, come to the ranch in search of jobs and Danny gives them their break. Tess Parker (Heather Ayers), Danny's city girlfriend, shows up, as does hard-drinking Tom Mason (Gregory Wooddell), once Danny's rival for Tess and now, briefly, for Molly. Gieber gets elected sheriff, which is sure to spell his doom, but against all odds, he captures the bad guys (Daniel Stewart Sherman and Jeremy Beck). The couples sort out their differences and peace and harmony reign.

Gasteyer, with verve, brassily belted out Kate's "Barbary Coast," a paean to San Francisco; "I Got Rhythm," sustaining the high notes in the best Merman tradition; and "Sam and Delilah," a hot "cautionary tale" she "learned in Sunday school;" and made the most of the romantic "Boy! What Love Has Done to Me!" when she realized she wanted to stick with Slick after all. Diamantopoulos poured out his heart in "Embraceable You," confessing love at first sight, which Newton didn't return, but when his ardor cooled temporarily, it prompted her wistful, "But Not for Me." Knight seconded her here, trying to cheer her with clever Maurice Chevalier, Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, and Jimmy Durante impressions. During a detour to Mexico, Kudisch, straying from Gasteyer's side, tendered a charming S&M entreaty to a bevy of señoritas to "Treat Me Rough." Cowboy Quartette Glenn Seven Allen, Benjamin Howes, Jack Doyle, and Carson Church eloquently sang the praises of the determinedly languid life in "Bidin' My Time." Maestro Fisher took the time for a short, but impressive cornet solo during the entr'acte. Kudos go to the ensembles, choral and orchestral.

One doesn't look for political correctness in a '30s escapist musical, or one will surely court disappointment. Despite Gieber's Yiddish Native American moment, a rhythmic chant of "Oy oy oy oy/oy oy oy oy" in feathered headdress and blanket, I'm sure that the stage Jewish stereotype was toned down somewhat from the original. While I did wonder what Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who was present, thought of the depictions of not so wise Latina women and men here, it was a line early on that particularly gave me pause. When a chorus of burly butch "Broncho Busters" boasted, "on Western prairies/we shoot the fairies/or send them back to the East," I thought something certainly could have been done to amend the text's casual touting of antigay violence. Who, after all, makes up much of the Encores! audience?

Next on tap are Harold Rome, S.N. Behrman and Joshua Logan's "Fanny" (1954), which originally starred Ezio Pinza and was based on Marcel Pagnol's trilogy "Marius," "Fanny," and "César," slated for February 4 to 7, 2010, and Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' "Anyone Can Whistle" (1964), which had featured Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick, and is due from April 8 to 11. Tickets at $95, 50 and 25 are available at the New York City Center Box Office on 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, through CityTix® at 212/581-1212, or online at www.nycitycenter.org.