San Diego Reader

Lamb's Players Theatre reprises one of its most popular shows. In this salute to the Baby Boom generation, when a guy sings a snippet from "Big Girls Don't Cry," a woman counters with "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To," as if Lesley Gore wrote the song in response to the Four Seasons. Now in its fourth - fifth? - version, Boomers has grown a great deal since it premiered in 1993. It's added social dimensions (the original was mostly about middle-class whites), more period details, and a much better understanding of one's later years (gained from experience: authors Kerry Meads and Vanda Eggington are now 15 years older). Ostensibly the piece is a lecture about the generation from 1946 to 1964. A deliberately, sometimes annoyingly, crotchety Jim Chovik recalls major events and provides statistics, from JFK to Kent State (but leaves out Jackson State!), from hippies to yuppies, marriage to divorce, and beyond. Themes from TV commercials and shows zip past, medleys of parts of songs cluster around a theme (Vietnam, relationships), and the evening unfolds like a game of "name that tune" in fast-forward. Boomers in the audience gulp "oh's" of recognition when a musical fragment triggers memories. One could wish that, at least once or twice, the company would do a whole song (let Anise Ritchie's Aretha-strong voice do all of "Respect"; or Keith Jefferson, all of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"). One could also wish that the characters weren't so one-note (Bill Doyle's hippie must express the same Owsley-marinated perplexity at least ten times). But the performances overall are quite good, as are Meads's direction and the four-piece backup band. You won't learn why the pump don't work or how good brown sugar can taste, but if you're of a certain era, Boomers will time-machine you back in a lively manner. 619-437-0600.

July 5 through February 15