Jimmy also directs Millie to the women's hotel. The play's Mrs. Meers (Hollis Resnik) is a frustrated actress pretending to be Chinese (the first strategy for this PC package). Millie soon meets Dorothy (Diana Kaarina) and finds employment with Trevor Graydon (Sean Allan Krill).

Millie's typing test for Mr. Graydon does afford this stage musical a chance for a delightful tap number where the women are in moving desks, tapping as they type in "The Speed Test."

With a job, Millie goes out to celebrate with the girls looking for a place to drink some illegal booze (because this is Prohibition era NYC) when they bump into Jimmy who takes them to the Tie-One-On Club ("The Nuttycracker Suite"). But as luck would have it, the joint is raided and the girls and Jimmy all end up in jail where Jimmy discovers he's in love with Millie.

The rest of the storyline is about the same. Millie meets Muzzy (Pamela Isaacs) and breaks up with Jimmy only to lose her boss to Dorothy. Millie suspects Dorothy and Jimmy are lovers. But Jimmy, Trevor and Millie must work together to save Dorothy from her Chinese abductors. Here, instead of Jimmy in drag as bait (as in the movie), Muzzy pretends to be an orphan. Millie's talent in stenography helps save the day, but I don't think this play will influence today's generation of women to take up this skill.

Scanlon has given Mrs. Meers' two Chinese henchmen (Darren Lee and Andrew Pang) songs and a purpose for involvement in this slavery ring (hoping to earn enough money to bring their mother to the U.S.). Where in the movie one of the Chinese henchmen (Jack Soo) lusted after Dorothy and seemed ready to have his way with her, in the stage version, one of them falls in love with her and only reluctantly abducts her.

There's an awkwardness to the ending; it lacks the kind of sentimental symmetry required for a truly happy traditional ending.

The stage version doesn't have Carol Channing shot out of a cannon, Julie Andrews' wonderful voice or Mary Tyler Moore acting ditzy, but despite a clumsy ending, the stage version of "Thoroughly Modern Millie" is a modernized (read PC) valentine to the old-fashioned movie stories where people broke out into song and joyfully tapped their uncomplicated lives away.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; select Thursdays, 2 p.m. matinees; Saturdays, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. (213) 972-7231. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes with one 15-minute intermission. www.taperahmanson.com or www.modernmillie.com/home.htm