The American Heartland taps out a Ginger Rogers tribute, while the Coterie taps a messy vein

The American Heartland Theatre’s Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Rogers Musical is a high-spirited tribute to the headstrong Texas hoofer who walked away from her partnership with Fred Astaire at the peak of their success. It earns its keep on sweat, hustle and a score I’m tempted to call swell — especially when the talented ensemble taps through “We’re in the Money” or “I Got Rhythm.”

Musical director Anthony Edwards finally gets songs worth his talent. Dancers come in twos and fours, in solos and in full-ensemble extravaganzas, executing director Jeremy Benton’s choreography with dash and verve.

The first third — which finds a teenage Rogers dreaming of stardom, winning a dance contest and hitting the vaudeville circuit — excites because of the performers’ skills and the surefire pleasures of a show-biz success story.

Unfortunately, despite the pleasures of several strong numbers (and Georgianna Londre’s spectacular costumes), Backwards in High Heels is more interested in Ginger Rogers and her mother (Licia Watson) than in her timeless work with Fred Astaire — the reason we know her name at all.

Christopher McGovern’s hurry-along book shows us the shape of Rogers’ life the way a cross-country flight shows us the beauty of America. Watson is good as Rogers’ mother and sometimes moves us, but a show built on nostalgia should do more with the glamour and less with the mommy issues.

As Rogers, Vanessa Sonon sings well, dances with grace and enthusiasm, and pouts so tenderly that we’re almost sympathetic when our heroine gripes about success. From the scant minutes we see Rogers and Astaire together, we can intuit why Rogers finds the partnership with Astaire (Sean Montgomery) dissatisfying. But there’s something off in the way the show presents this breakup as something we should celebrate.

Sure, she did everything that Astaire did, backward and in heels, but this is like Beatle-mania ending with how great McCartney’s life was once he was freed of those other schmoes.

The emphasis might feel off in Backwards in High Heels, but at the Coterie Theatre, emphasis is all we get in Atypical Boy, a world-premiere kids’ show by Laurie Brooks. Narrator Martin Buchanan directly questions audience members — “Is it more important to be popular or to be yourself?” — as though they’re on a field trip to Donahue.

That comes at the show’s climax, when its ostracized hero (Alex Espy) lies crumpled on the stage, having given into the monster inside him — a creepy puppet that teaches the shunned to hate. The boy, you see, sang la la la while the rest of his town sang ta rum ta rum, so his family chucked him away for being different. He also spaces out and does this flickering thing with his fingers that reminds the kids of birds.

Soon, a hate monster (amusingly puppeted and voiced by Corrie Van Ausdal) emerges from his backpack and encourages him to fight with a bigger, more hateful outcast. This one is played by Jason Loverde, with creepy shrunken heads sprouting on him. A final outcast (Heidi Van, part clown and part leading lady) tries to convince our hero not to hate others just because he feels hated. After some 40 minutes, this grim, abstract, pedantic melodrama scatters its heroes across the stage in failure so that Buchanan can question the crowd about what it all means.

At first, he asks the kids in the audience to stand to indicate agreement with statements like “conformity is necessary.”

Everyone sits, as you’d hope, but what else could they do? Stand up for conformity against the wishes of the crowd?

Buchanan then throws out questions, like “what does the monster represent?”

The younger kids bat this around until a bored-looking older guy shouts “hate” in the tone you might use to say “enough already.”

Buchanan invites us to stand up, one at a time, and offer our hero encouraging words.

“No one is perfect!” a boy insists.

“You need self-affirmation,” a teacher says.

“You’re awesome at something,” another boy says. (Maybe heroes of children’s plays should have memorable traits.)

“Your bird thing is so hardcore,” a wry young lady says, referring to the hero’s dreamy fingerplay. This delights the crowd, which catches several layers of meaning: She was making fun and making a point at the same time, a combination that, at shows besides this one, is a Coterie specialty.

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