Mitch Berman watched seats being torn out of the Century II Concert Hall Thursday, confident new ones would be ready by the time the Wichita Symphony strikes its first chords of the fall.

“They’ll get it done,” said Berman, executive director of the symphony. “They have to.”

The Symphony has nowhere else to go for its first concert in the newly refurbished hall in October.

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"The Great American Trailer Park Musical," a bawdy but delightfully silly celebration of white trash shenanigans in a Florida "manufactured home community," is the first book musical for Cabaret Oldtown in quite a while, and it's a welcome return to story lines and plot twists.

To be sure, the intimate theater has thoroughly entertained audiences with a number of original musical revues, often built around the distinctive songs of a particular era, and presented in a plot-free, jukebox format. Those shows relied on the performers' personalities rather than characterization. They also rolled along on quips and spontaneous banter rather than dialogue.

With this treat, Cabaret Oldtown proves that it hasn't lost its acting finesse. Director Christi Moore and her cast easily find the snicker, chuckle or belly laugh in every line. They play it broadly, as befits this brash satire from David Nehls (music and lyrics) and Betsy Kelso (book) that took off-Broadway by surprise about five years ago. One slight warning: There are bits of adult language but you'll probably be laughing too hard to be offended.

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There's no plot, no dialogue, no specific characters to "Smokey Joe's Cafe," the second offering of the summer by Music Theatre of Wichita. Instead, it's a collection of 39 classic R&B and rock songs from the 1950s and 1960s performed by nine principal singers either solo or in various combinations from romantic duet to male quartet (think: the Coasters) to close-harmony choir.

We're talking familiar but seemingly unrelated songs like "On Broadway," "Stand by Me," "I'm a Woman," "Jailhouse Rock," "Hound Dog," "There Goes My Baby," "Fools Fall in Love," "Poison Ivy" and "Love Potion No. 9" — all penned by the legendary team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

But under director-choreographer Darren Lee and his associate, Melanie Lockyer (both here before for "Miss Saigon"), it's not just a random concert. Lee and Lockyer divide the songs into a half -dozen vignettes to celebrate youth passing through various stages of life.

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Move over, Ethel Merman and Patti LuPone. Karen Robu stakes her claim to the meaty role of the ultimate stage mom, Mama Rose, in the classic "Gypsy," and strikes pure gold.

The locally based Robu, like both of those Broadway divas, has a voice that can blast out the back wall with the explosive power of "Everything's Coming Up Roses." But she also has the control and the sweetness to wend her way around a tender lyric like "You'll Never Get Away From Me."

"Gypsy" kicked off Music Theatre of Wichita's 39th summer season Wednesday night.

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If you've spent much time in East High's auditorium, you know those old seats don't have much going for them.

They're old. They're small. They're hard. They're awfully uncomfortable.

What they have, though, is history. Nostalgia. Sentimental value.

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