STAGE REVIEW : Overdue ‘Baby’ Arrives at Last, Courtesy of San Bernardino CLO

It’s amazing that “Baby” didn’t bounce into Southern California until now. You’d think that this show would be just the ticket for an era when baby boomers are creating their own baby boom.

Not commercial enough? It’s true that the initial Broadway production in 1983 wasn’t a big hit. But it was nominated for seven Tonys, and it has been produced around the country.

Besides, this is a funny, tuneful musical that makes you feel good about being human. If that isn’t commercial, perhaps we deserve inhuman shows.

Even now, “Baby” has arrived far from Los Angeles--at the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera’s elegant old California Theatre.

The Los Angeles Civic Light Opera is presumably too busy scouting the non-musical shows (such as “Driving Miss Daisy,” which it has scheduled for spring) to bother with the likes of “Baby.”

Neither show nor production is perfect. But this “Baby” generates enough good will to give most of its audience (excepting incorrigible misanthropes, of course) the sort of glow that is often ascribed to pregnant women.

Sybille Pearson’s book follows three couples who have babies on the brain. They all live in the same college town and are acquainted with each other, though the connections are not important.

Arlene and Alan McNally (Carol Lawrence and Dick Gautier) are 43 and 48, respectively, and about to begin living for themselves again after raising three daughters. Arlene’s unexpected pregnancy changes those plans.

If only it would happen to Pam Sakarian (Lynne Wintersteller). She and Nick (Mark McGrath) are thirtysomething and ready and willing to take the big step into parenthood. But Nick’s sperm cells aren’t cooperating.

Lizzie Fields (Andi Henig) and Danny Hooper (Michael Brian) are still college juniors. Lizzie’s pregnancy is an accident. But she and Danny want to go through with it. Marriage is another story: He wants it, she doesn’t.

Looking at the script dispassionately, the youngest couple’s story is too rosy. All the attention devoted to whether they’ll marry distracts from the issue of whether these kids should be parents.

But the treatment of the other couples steers the show away from the gooey. Arlene and Alan waver between wanting another child and shuddering at the prospect--and their marriage flounders as a result. As for Pam and Nick--well, the longest laugh in the show is at Nick’s expense.

Anyway, David Shire’s music and Richard Maltby Jr.’s lyrics transcend the schematic nature of the book. It’s a wonderful score, running the gamut from simple love songs to sly commentaries to “The Story Goes On,” a great anthem about the chain of life that sweeps us up in Lizzie’s desire to give birth, despite our better judgment about her timing.

Charles Abbott’s staging is in mostly fine form. The younger couples are all they should be, and the choreography is simply but sharply designed and danced.

Lawrence handles her role with professional aplomb, but she was not ideally cast; she simply doesn’t look 43 (she is 56). Gautier doesn’t have the right look and bearing, either--it’s more lounge lizard than college administrator--and his singing voice is the weakest in this cast.

The physical production, designed by Clarke W. Thornton, is austere. Missing are the film sequences of sperm and zygotes and fetuses that added a touch of awe to the initial production--an effect that can even be heard on the cast album, thanks to a brief narration that’s omitted in San Bernardino. The centerpiece of the set here is a bed that dances merrily, backed by a landscape that suggests the changing seasons.

But “Baby” has not been thrown out with the bathwater, and that’s what counts. Here’s hoping an even better “Baby” is born soon, somewhere in Los Angeles.