He wrote that?

If you take anything away from TheatreWorks' "Sweet and Hot," it will be a musical education. Did you know, for instance, that the guy who wrote "Stormy Weather" also wrote "Lydia the Tattooed Lady"? Or that the guy who wrote "One for my Baby" also wrote "I Love a Parade"? The man is Harold Arlen, best known for composing the music for "The Wizard of Oz." At least once during this show, you are likely to say to yourself, "Oh, he wrote that?"

The amazing diversity of Arlen's writing comes to the fore in the first half, which the cast of six singers throws out in a series of skit-like settings. The first 15 minutes includes a military drumfest, a daredevil in-line skating entrance, a two-woman banana tree with foot-tall platform shoes and shapely Riette Burdick in a splendidly decorated bodysuit as the aforementioned Lydia.

It's disappointing that the Wizard is not given more his due (I, for one, would have loved to hear "If I Only Had a Brain"), but the first-half finale does present an amusing tease, making use of the film's immortal characters to slip through some of Arlen's other songs. Imagine the Wicked Witch of the West (Burdick, in Julie Engelbrecht's fantastic Snow White Witch costume) scaring off the famous foursome with "That Old Black Magic," then Dorothy (Liana Young) lamenting the loss of her companions with "The Man That Got Away."

In between the tattooed lady and the Wizard parody, we get three songs from the 1954 Arlen/Truman Capote collaboration, "House of Flowers." Capote's lyrics actually seem pretty run-of-the-mill for a writer of his stature, and certainly pale in comparison to those of Ira Gershwin ("The Man That Got Away"), Johnny Mercer ("That Old Black Magic") and Ted Koehler ("Stormy Weather"), but the inclusion makes an interesting distraction.

In the second half, however, the revue, first produced by Julianne Boyd and the Asolo Theatre Company of Sarasota, Fla., seems to run out of ideas, settling for the standard romantic-doings-inside-a-nightclub theme (and going so far as to borrow the art deco railings from TheatreWorks' 1994 "Ain't Misbehavin'"). The stronger songs come through just fine, but the weaker and lesser-known suffer from the lack of an interesting setting.

I would have to bicker, also, with some of the musical treatments. Though Michael Page rips his smoky baritone with great effect through numbers like "Sweet and Hot" and "Blues in the Night," he takes the same approach for "One for My Baby," which cries out for the more subdued, melancholy attitude of Sinatra's famous rendition (it doesn't help, of course, that it's stuck in a medley with "Accentuate the Positive"). The same problem arises when the revue finally acknowledges the 2-ton elephant that's been sitting on stage (hint: it's a song about a rainbow). The finale brings out some astounding a cappella passages, but the final chorus, at least, should have been less of the old Broadway ta-da! and more like something that might be sung by a lonely Kansas farmgirl.

When subtlety is not what's called for, this cast burns up the stage. Michelle Jordan takes hold of Lena Horne's signature "Stormy Weather," rips it up into little pieces and throws it like confetti into the audience. Liana Young brings a voice to blues numbers like "The Man That Got Away" and "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues" that seems to belong to someone about 100 pounds heavier. Riette Burdick makes the ideal femme fatale, and teams up with dynamo dancer Peter Gregus for some inspiring Astaire and Rogers action in "It's Only a Paper Moon."

Accompanied by Lita B. Libaek and her swingin' jazz ensemble and directed by Bick Goss, who staged last year's "The World Goes 'Round" and San Francisco's long-running "Cole!" this production is one step short of greatness. Cut a few mediocre songs, and maybe throw in a few more playful props (like a toy Toto, for example, thrust in on a sliding ramp), and you might have one helluva show.