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BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY. From the novel by Jay McInerney. Music, book, lyrics by Paul Scott Goodman. Direction and musical staging, Michael Greif. Scenic design, Paul Clay. Costume design, Angela Wendt. New York Theater Workshop, 29 E. Fourth St., Manhattan. Seen Monday.
ANY TRENDY Manhattan restaurant that sticks around longer than a case of food poisoning deserves its own anthem. Paul Scott Goodman, the composer and author of the musical "Bright Lights, Big City," couldn't have chosen a watering hole more songworthy than Odeon, that enduring TriBeCa mecca for the fabulous and the fit (fabulous-in-training). Everybody now: "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-deon! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-deon!"
The refrain never gets any more complicated than that. This is because the chorus of diners singing its praises is too high on cocaine, martinis, power and the scent of sexual conquest to make like Cole Porter. This, after all, is Odeon in its '80s infancy, when greed and gimme-gimme propelled the city's young movers and shakers. Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-dious!
You needn't have lived through that era of less-than-divine-decadence to catch the whiff of deja vu that hangs over "Bright Lights, Big City," from the first sight of its double-tiered steel set to the intro in which the blond hero throws head and arms back in pounding song with a guy on an electric guitar.
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