The Marysville Charter Academy for the Arts production, "Sentimental Journey," was a pleasant pastiche of performances that glanced around America's last three good decades, the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Directed by Lauren Myers, with Jacque Dake and Allison Unpingco handling the enormous choreography load, the show last night was, start to finish, a very good revue of some very talented students in some very stylish acts, including old burlesque skits and cabaret sets.

The skimpy program notes make it impossible to always give full credit to those who deserve it, but…

Ayla Clark performed the title piece, a 40s ballad done by many but most associated with an up-and-coming teenager of that period: Doris Day.

Elegant in black, Clark used her excellent voice to hit all the right notes at the proper times. She put in some of Julie London close-to-the-mike breathiness, which she may have matured a bit in skill and range from her role last as "Blousy Brown" role The Acting Company's kiddie comedy, "Bugsy Malone."

The revue remained in the 40s with two young ladies dressed like Damon Runyon characters doing their rendition of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello doing "Who's on First," a classic vaudeville routine transplanted to radio and into the memories of an entire war-time generation.

It must be assumed that Kamryn Wisner was Abbott and Ashleigh Reed Costello, based on the order they were listed in the sparse progam.

Breakneck speed and flawless timing are the sine qua non for the comic execution "Who's on first" and the two girls did it well, even capturing some of the Mutt and Jeff chemistry of the A&C comedy team -- though they may have gotten their proportions reversed. Bud was the tall skinny one; Lou was the short, fat one.

The Westside Story/"America" ensemble number was colorful and well laid out with a lot of talent displayed on stage. But the display of talent was undermined by the over-miked, unbalanced and way-too sound design.

The hay barn dimension and Carslbad Caverns acoustics of the Marysville Auditorium can be a problem, but some people seem to think that the only way to fix it is to add another deck of speakers and crank up the volume. No, no, no.

Case in point: many of the same singers were assembled on the same stage two acts down the program as the MCAA Choir performing "Unchained Melody" and "Please, Mr. Postman" -- two late 50s early 60s rock hits.

Under the director of the estimable Xenobia Brown, the choir filled the room with their own splendid voices, minimally jacked up by technology.

By the way, very notable in the act was soloist Rebecca Hilton, who came back later for "If I Loved You." Now there is a talent that is likely to go places. She has an aura of command that harbinged a career in a cabaret in some future open much bigger than Marysville.

Five female vocalist, Clark, Hilton, Shannon King, Ashley Torres and Dahni Trujillo took a crack at being a chanteuse.

Torres deserves an extra helping of credit for risking the challenge of performing Edith Piaf's signature tune, "La Vie en Rose." A very tough act to follow. Foreign language, lot of hard notes to hit and a song that demands character acting as well as vocal skill.

Torres did a good job with it, for sure, but I would like her to have deployed her available assets somewhat differently. For one thing, she had the luxury of a live accompanist, and not some mechanical karaoke machine playing.

And with an accomplished pianist like Tommy Parker sitting right there at her beck and call, she could had modulated the notes, lowered the key and changed the dramatic pace to enhance her significant gifts.

Speaking a Parker, who is unquestionably well-trained in piano, I'd like to know his future plans. He appeared to be most comfortable in doing "Prelude in G Minor." So are we looking at a Van Cliburn in his early years here?

But back to the club singers.

King chose a good song, an old Everly Brothers rock era ballad. "Dream, Dream, Dream" -- country charts cross-over tune penned by their songwriter Dad, as I recall. King looked very good with her hair done up in a swell gesture to the curls popular in the late 40s-50s. She demonstrated a good facility with the song, though she sometimes fell into the trap that comes with mimicking TV performers lipping the mike's foam pad. And she had to struggle to overcome the over-amped sound set-up. Still, she did very well, thank you.

And this brings us to the always surprising Dahni Trujillo.

It is always dangerous to name a best in a show like this because when there is a lot of great talent milling about a huge stage it's easy to miss something.

Dahni Trujillo's voice showed the greatest depth and range of the many ood singers last night. She was also the most fluent in the language and styles of the performing.

Trujillo has, already at the age of 15 (I think), gained enormous stage power and presence. She has what it takes to draw an audience into that secret world she creates with her voice as she interprets a song. Last night she did it with Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game," which she did accompanying herself on a guitar I'm told she'd only recently picked up.

"Circle Game" is a nostalgic song with its heart is laden with the rue of lost times and disappointed loves. These are mature sentiments that usually come only after years and miles and blows to a vulnerable soul.

Occasionally, such sensibilities are born innate in a person, arriving with them like strawberry birthmarks and left-handedness. People with those qualities are artists. With luck, focus and few right choices, they sometimes become stars.

Personally, I would like to have heard Dahni do a less folky, coffeehouse song than "Circle." I'd like to have heard her do "I'm Just a Woman" or "Wee Small Hours" or "Where or When" or "Just in Time" or even "I'll See You in C-U-B-A" with a Dooley Wilson or some Tommy Parker

That’s just my taste, I know, but America has gone too long without a Billie Holliday or Helen Forrest or a young Peggy Lee, and, with her wise-beyond-her-years sense of romantic loss and vain hope, Dahni Trujillo could give us one again.

Last, and certainly not least, Jacque Dake and the MCAA dancers, who put the most energy and work into the biggest numbers of the night deserve special mention.

I'd name each one if I had a list to work from. Some I recognized, like Kenni Fayette, who did yeoman's work in the front line of several acts. Then there was "Kristin" (whose whole name I can recall) from "Bugsy." She wore the red cheongsam-style outfit in the "Cirque de Soleil". These are too skilled dancers just coming into their own.

Amanda Blanchard, who, besides being assistant director, was a powerhouse dancer in her own high octane solo, "Like Being in Love" as well as in the big show-stopper numbers: "Swing", "Jailhouse Rock" and, with Dake and Lindsey Tabler, "Burning Love."

Blanchard is so dramatic, you sometimes can't keep your eyes from following her, even when the stage was crammed with moving bodies.

She also did a finetacting turn as Lucy in the "I'm gonna be queen someday" scene with Linus (Chris McCarty) taken from "Charlie Brown."

Dake danced in for and ill Austin Dixon. She not only showed the audience why she's the teacher, but she also made a lot of women very envious and wish they hadn't hung up their ballet slippers quite so soon.

The aww-gee act of the night? The motley band playing "The Wiliam Tell Overture" with the Lne Ranger and Tonto on trumpet (and Melanie Gonzales, directing). Harts went out to the clarinet player who delightfully hit a squeaky wrong note, bringing many a happy memory back for audience members.'

Acting kudos to the cast of "The Operating Room" skit -- Liz Brookes, athan Harling, Chris McCarty, Ronnie Stage and Alex Skeffington. Double kudos to whichever played the jsurgeon's ealous wife.

Also notable for her acting skills was Veronica Stage (who may be the one and the same as Ronnie Stage in the above mentioned "Operating Room") , playing opposite David Gillespie in a scene from "our Town."

Director Staci Johnson began acquainting the bulk of the cast Wednesday with the couple of the eight or nine ensemble numbers most are expected to participate in during the show, in particular "We Go Together" and "Greased Lightning."

Many cast members were absent, some of them being Marysville Charter Academy of the Arts students finishing "hell week' rehearsals for Sentimental Journey, a revue of songs and dances from the '40s, '50s and '60s, which opens Thursday for a two-day run.

As Johnson went over the songs, line by line, appreciation grew for the writers and performers of those seemingly simple songs from the Golden Age of rock 'n' roll. Those songs were not as easy as they looked. Every silly syllable, every subtle "shewa-de-bop-bop" has its purpose in the melodic structure.

"See the 'da' in the 'ka-ding da-dong'?" Johnson said, referring to the scripts in cast members' laps. "Got to have that, or it doesn't come out with the 'rama-lama, lama-lama ding-dong'."

At issue was the heart of doo-wop, the urban song-style created by "corner boys" in the ghettos, black and white, in the major cities of the East Coast in the 1950s - in crucible neighborhoods like South Philly, North Baltimore, East Brooklyn and West Hoboken.

The kids on the corner -- .a.k.a. "block boys" -- were small groups of three and four lifelong pals hanging out on the stoops on hot nights or under the street light in front of the corner mom-and-pop that was the mercantile and social hub for those too young or too broke to get into the jive clubs and gin mills a few doors down the block.

Choir-trained, all heart, totally soul, but generally lacking musical instruments, they sang a cappella and made the sounds that laid in the bass lines, provided the harmonies and stabbed in the punctuation points of early rock 'n' roll.

As rock swept the nation's generation and the stacks of wax piled higher and higher at WNEW, WBAL the Big KIDD the kids down on the corner were but a borough and a dream away from the talent scouts' offices and only 100,000 watts of Radio POWER!! from a Top 40 hit.

Now how is Staci Johnson gong to teach the spirit of doo-wop to 30 kids living two generations away from that innocent age when three girls could pay $3 , squeeze into a sound booth at Palisades Park and do a one-minute vinyl demo that could -- with a little luck, matching dresses and maybe a darker shade of lipstick -- swing them a recording contract? How indeed.

"I want to hear those consonants. B, T, G. Nice and sharp. 'We Go To Gether'. Don't sing 'shaaa-naaa-naaaaaa.' Sing 'Sha-Na-Na,'" Johnson barked, snapping her fingers on each note.

The kids gathered in co-director Pierrette Jensen's living room seemed to have the beginnings of the energy that forms the core of rock 'n' roll. They've seen the movie. They've heard the songs. But do they understand the underlying driving force of bedrock rock 'n' roll?

Watching the four kids playing the "Burger Palace Boys" there may be a chance. A very good chance.

The group includes the good-looking but shy Matt Monaco, serious Tyler Brand, likable class cut-up Jasper Oliver and the seemingly rockin'est, rhythmest of the quartet, James Wilton, who -- had he gone to high school when his grandparents did -- would doubtless have earned a power gym class nickname like Jukebox James, or Wanton Wilton.

With some good casting choices Johnson and Jensen have managed to put together the quintessentially typical, most-likely-to-be-fondly-remembered gang of tough-talking-but-soft-hearted rock 'n' rollers from the graduating class of 19Whenever.

"All the songs you're going to hear in this will remind you of another song you've heard," Johnson told the cast. "Because that's what Grease! is -- it's an homage to rock 'n' roll."

Two dozen teenagers, an almost-teen and several definitely post-teens were crammed into Pierrette Jensen's living room in Yuba City Tuesday listening to director Staci Johnson scope out the play.

It was a warm summer evening and the dense crowd pushed the inside temperature at Chez Pierrette to the uncomfortable range. The young actors idly fanned themselves as a lone fan arced back and forth.

"I'll give the history of how this came to be. I wasn't going to direct anything this year. I was the back-up director for this. The director backed out," Johnson explained.

(Then wouldn't that make her the "back-out" director?)

"I can't do this alone. I'm directing a production at the Forbes dinner house. After rehearsal here, I have to go there. As you all know, I also do the Yuba-Sutter Pageant. That starts in two weeks. I've asked Pierrette to help. Neither one of us was going to direct this year, but I couldn't do it without her."

(So far, so bad. Grim headline in tomorrow's Variety: Reluctant director warns cast she's stressed to the max before the show even gets going.)

"But if there's any play I'd like to direct, it's "Grease!" I'm glad I'm doing it," Johnson adds, smiling.

(Whew!)

Professional, focused, Johnson then lays out for the young cast what is expected of them.

Sign in here. Make sure you name is spelled. Be at rehearsals when you're supposed to be. Know you lines. Work the whole time.

"Just because I'm might be working with Jenny here doesn't mean you can goof off" -- she puts on a dufus grin, lolls her head about -- "You should be in the other room going over your songs."

So much for the hard stuff. Now for the fun. Jensen produces a rough mock-up of the stage set, likely to be built by Randy Fayette, who also constructed the sets for "Bugsy Malone."

It looked good. Three basic elements, creatively linked to provide all the scenes of a distantly recalled high school: bleachers, gym, lockers in the hallway, plenty of places to rock 'n' roll.

Costumes and scenes are to be cartoonish in the way a dream resolves the past into simplified and idealized images.

There were revisions to the opening scene. Some songs will be deleted, some substituted, some added.

"Imagine going to Grease! and not hearing, 'Hopelessly Devoted to You'?" Johnson wondered aloud, with overtones of a remembered date.

"We're going to have a real car!" Oohs and aahs, ripple around the room. "'Greased Lightning' -- the name of the Kenickie's beloved rod -- "is going to be soooo hot!"

The read-through showed strengths and weaknesses. The kids generally had the sense of the characters down and an understanding of how to deliver lines. Most of them have probably seen at least the movie.

But improvements wee needed in some areas. Notably diction and enunciation. They also need someone to explain the difference between acting for film, with which they are familiar, and acting for the stage, which makes different demands and requires different techniques.

As for diction and delivery, Jasper Oliver, Dahni Trujillo and Colleen Sullivan are for the moment the clearest. Matt Monaco, needs to speak up and sharpen his enunciation. Tyler Brand has good enunciation, but needs to slow down. In fact, everyone has to slow down. Learn to savor their lines and punch the words. Over act, ever so slightly in keeping with the cartoonish atmosphere the directors would like to achieve.

As stage actors, they must understand that their performances unlike those of movie actors, cant be paused, rewound and played again to decipher the garbled words.

They should know that their performances in Grease! will be as ephemeral as the young years they are currently sailing through. It behooves them to draw out, polish and perfect the few lines and songs they have now, for those, too, will never come again.