VALDOSTA — Excited from a successful opening night in New York State, cast and crew begin their national tour eventually arriving in the South where the term “Damn Yankees!” has a slightly different connotation than the famed musical’s title intends.

As part of the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts Presenter Series, the professional production of “Damn Yankees!” arrives Jan. 30 in Valdosta. The musical combines the deal-with-a-devil concept of Faust with baseball, music and comedy. It also features the song “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets,” which many will recognize from a series of recent Pepsi commercials featuring Sofia Vergara.

As for this production’s Lola, she and the rest of the crew are pleased to be hitting the road. They began rehearsal the day after Christmas in the empty theatre of a New Jersey university, where they presented a show preview. Last week, they opened the show in Ogdensburg, N.Y., near the Canadian border. The Times caught up with cast and crew traveling by bus the day after the opening.

“We walked in and the space was completely different from where we had rehearsed,” says actress Sara Brophy of the first show. “Immediately, we received instructions to change this, this and this. It kept us on our toes.”

Brophy plays Lola. “Damn Yankees!” is her first national tour. Tour veterans advised her and other newcomers to be prepared. The dimensions of the show will change every night to fit the space of each new stage from town to town.

Walter Milani, the show’s company manager, says this production includes a good mix of actors who have performed in past traveling shows and professional actors taking their first tour of the country by bus and truck. Milani began working as a company manager in 1990. This is his first road tour since 2004. Tour veterans are already helping the newcomers adjust.

“The vets are always an amazing influence,” Milani says. “When people don’t know what to do, they always step forward to help.”

Matt Taylor is one of those veterans. Before playing the baseball-loving schlub who, with the help of the devil, becomes baseball phenomenon Joe Hardy, Taylor spent most of last year playing Rum Tum Tugger in a national tour of “Cats!”

Playing the more level-headed Joe Hardy is a welcome change from the larger-than-life, hard-to-please Rum Tum Tugger.

“Tugger would not shy away from Lola as Joe Hardy does,” Taylor says. “... It’s good to play a more realistic character.”

Actor Chris Winslow finds himself in the opposite situation. He plays the devilish and outlandish Mr. Applegate, a character who has been played by performers such as Ray Walston and Jerry Lewis. Winslow says he is familiar with both performances.

If he must choose an influence, he says he falls more into the Walston camp than Lewis. Walston treated the role as a character whereas Jerry Lewis played Applegate as, well, Jerry Lewis.

While Winslow has created a few bits for Applegate, they are nothing like the improv Lewis brought to the role. Lewis would famously launch into 30-minute forays from his night-club act during his Applegate performances.

“I would watch a tape of his performance and thought my script must be missing some pages, but it was Jerry Lewis doing his thing,” Winslow says. “... I channel both (Walston and Lewis) but mostly it’s me.”

That seems to work. Unable to find a suitable Applegate in New York auditions, an old friend involved with the production suggested Winslow. Unable to leave a gig in Florida, he sent an audition tape of himself to New York, thinking a recording wouldn’t be enough to secure him the role. But it did.

As for Sara Brophy, she lives in New York. Since graduating in 2008, she has worked in professional theatre in Virginia, Indianapolis, and Connecticut. She takes some influence for the siren Lola from actress Gwen Verdon, a part written for her.

In performing “Lola Wants,” the show’s most famous song, she says it is a little intimidating. So is the character.

“Lola is one of the most famous characters in American theatre,” Brophy says. “She can be intimidating, but mostly she is a lot of fun to play.”

Her fun will likely increase as she adds more performances before the Valdosta show, and even more so, as the show travels the nation with 67 shows in 57 venues across 30 states before wrapping in mid-April.



SHOWTIME

Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts Presenter Series hosts “Damn Yankees!”

When: 7:30 p.m., Jan. 30.

Where: Mathis City Auditorium, 2300 N. Ashley St.

Show ticket: $45.

Dinner theatre: The Presenter Series also offers an optional, pre-show dinner of stroganoff, rice, green beans, sautéed squash, bread, salad, dessert, etc., catered by Covington’s, at 6 p.m., for an additional $15 per person.

Reservations, more information: Call 247-2787; or visit turnercenter.org