Stageloft scores with music, merriment in lively `Gilligan'.

• Position: ENTERTAINMENT & LIFESTYLE

Byline: Paul Kolas

COLUMN: THEATER REVIEW

WORCESTER - Putting things in proper perspective, "Gilligan's Island - The Musical" doesn't exactly belong on the same shelf of musical theater as, say, "My Fair Lady," "West Side Story" or "The Sound of Music."

But for those who revere its original television source - and they are legion - the Professor's normally irrefutable logic does not apply. Nor should it, since director Neal Martel and his fabulous cast give us a two-hour tour of

irresistible fun and laughter that uncannily replicates the 1960s TV show's iconic caricatures to a tee.

It's refreshing to see Stageloft Repertory Theater step out of the mundane box of recycled community theater fare and go for broke, as they did on Saturday evening, with the regional premiere of Sherwood Schwarz's musical reworking of his own TV creation.

It's an absolute blast, full of Martel's customary inventive touches. An enormous Zenith "TV" sits squarely in the middle of the stage, as musicians Lenny McGuire, Mark Studer and Bruce Hanahan strike up the familiar TV theme song with the cast singing offstage.

A toy S.S. Minnow floats across the TV screen, dangling "clouds" usher in the storm that shipwrecks the boat, followed by the procession of seven stranded little figures.

Say goodbye to the Zenith and hello to the entering singing cast: Gilligan (Rob Killeen), Skipper (Jeremy Woloski), Thurston Howell III (Charles J. Grigaitis Jr.), Lovey Howell (Rose Gage), Ginger (Erica Dustin), The Professor (Erik Johnsen), and Mary Ann (Bethany Killeen.)

Add in an Alien (Dakota Schantz), too, but more about that later. Schwartz, and his son Lloyd, have managed to preserve the flavor of the TV show while adding a few new plot wrinkles with the songs Hope and Laurence Juber provide the characters.

"Lucky Guy" and "How Do You Know You're in Love?" are the two numbers that link the growing romantic interest between Gilligan and Mary Ann. Since Rob and Bethany Killeen are a married couple, both actors bring an added measure of shy and awkward chemistry to their parts. Rob Killeen is a bumbling, klutzy, lovable wonder as Gilligan. He's an ideal fit for Woloski's affectionately exasperated take on Skipper. Together they make an endearing stranded-on-an-island version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Gilligan has a gift for frustrating not only Skipper, but Johnsen's brainiac Professor, who spends an endless amount of time trying to get Gilligan to spell "hieroglyphics"...