Patrice Covington, right, rehearses with Director/ Choreographer Ken Leigh Rogers for Theatre-by- the-Sea’s production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, which opens the 2008 season on May 28.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

Local theater fans got a taste of things to come last summer when Theatre-by-the-Sea, which had been closed for four years, pulled together a terrific production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

The 75-year-old theater had changed hands in July, and new owner Bill Hanney wanted to offer at least one show before the end of the summer season. And the public was up for it. Forum had to be extended a week, the response was so enthusiastic.

“It was everything we hoped it would be,” said producing artistic director Amiee Turner.

“It was our audition to the community. And we got the job.”

Now the Matunuck theater is poised to offer its first full season since closing in 2003. Ain’t Misbehavin’ opens Wednesday in previews.

And Turner is pleased with the way things stand.

For one thing, subscriptions are running better than expected. The theater had braced for a significant drop in patrons because of the closing. The old owners, Laura Harris and Renny Serre, had operated the 500-seat theater for 15 years and were no longer interested in producing shows. And it took almost four years to find someone with the wherewithal and interest to run the property as a theater.

But about 85 percent of the previous subscribers have signed up for the season’s four shows, and Turner said the theater is “happy with that.” She added that she expects subscriptions to be back to the old levels, before the theater’s closing, within the next three years.

Theatre-by-the-Sea, she believes, is still a special place to Rhode Islanders, both young and old.

“It’s a unique place where grandparents bring their grandchildren,” said Turner, “where couples go on first dates, and where students from local universities come to see professional theater.”

Patrons will find few changes to the theater when they arrive this week, though. Only the restaurant, which has changed its name from Seahorse Grill to Bistro by the Sea, has undergone renovations.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

Turner said the theater wanted to celebrate its history on this 75th anniversary with a mix of shows that looked back at “what the theater has been and what it will be.”

She said the season offers a wide variety of entertainment.

“A really good show is what people want to see,” she said, “and those come in all shapes and sizes.”

Again, the first offering is Ain’t Misbehavin’, the rollicking revue based on music written by and made popular by jazz great Fats Waller.

George M, a tribute to Rhode Island’s own patriotic song-and-dance man George M. Cohan, opens June 18, and Evita, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s look at the life of Argentine legend Evita Peron, opens July 16.

Turner said the theater had good luck with George M about a dozen years ago and expects audiences to respond well this time around.

The season closes with The Producers, Mel Brooks’ zany farce about a down-on-his-luck producer and his accountant, who hatch a get-rich scheme by producing the world’s worst musical. The show, which swept the 2001 Tonys, runs from Aug. 6-31.

Earlier this week the cast for Ain’t Misbehavin’ was rehearsing in the theater’s warehouse studio in Wakefield. Afterwards, director Ken Leigh Rogers, a Broadway veteran, took a break to talk about the show.

Ain’t Misbehavin’ opened on Broadway in 1978 as a tribute to the black musicians who were part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, a time when uptown clubs were frequented by the upper crust and where a new style of music known as swing was born.

The show, which was done at Trinity Rep four years ago, features five singers who present an evening of rowdy humorous songs that reflect Waller’s take on life as a playful journey.

The show is more a revue that tells its story through such standards as “Honeysuckle Rose,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “The Joint is Jumpin” and “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.”

Turner noted that the show makes for a great concert, but said that it was also important to her that it be a piece of musical theater. And Rogers has tried to achieve that.

“There’s not a plot in the conventional sense,” said Rogers, who directed the show in the early 1990s. “It’s talking about life, how it was and how it is, in a fun jazzy idiom.”

Take a song like “The Joint is Jumpin’ ”, he said

“It’s about people who have worked in God knows what menial job all week, and come Friday and Saturday, they party hard. They get out there and scream. They let it go.”

It’s a show said Rogers that depicts moments of joy but also has hard-hitting tunes like “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue,” which offers a stinging indictment of racism.

“Toward the end of the show you have all these humorous numbers like “Fat and Greasy,” then we hit you with that strong song, “Black and Blue.” The reason we party is to live life, but also to forget the pain of what’s wrong with me, why can’t I get ahead, get a better job and sit in a restaurant with other people?”

Rogers and Turner worked together in a production of My One and Only several years ago, where they were both dancers.

When she decided to stage Ain’t Misbehavin’ she tracked him down, and got him out of “semi-retirement.”

These days Rogers teaches at Marymount Manhattan College, while still doing a little directing and choreography on the side.

“I’ll even perform if it’s really something I want to do,” said Rogers. “But they have to call me. I won’t audition.”

Rogers said he wants audiences for the show dancing as they leave the theater, humming a tune they have known or something that “tickled” them.

“I want them to be thoroughly entertained,” he said.

Ain’t Misbehavin’ opens Wednesday in previews and runs through June 15 at Theatre by the Sea, 364 Card’s Pond Rd., Matunuck. Tickets are $35 for previews Wednesday and Thursday, and $39 to $49 for all other performances. Call (401) 782-8587.

cgray@projo.com