A long, loud 'Night With Janis Joplin'

• Mary Elizabeth Davies brings uncanny authenticity to her portrait of the late rock icon
• Female backup singers juggle roles with stunning dexterity but little nuance
• USA TODAY rating%3A * * 1/2 stars out of four

Early in A Night With Janis Joplin (* * 1/2 out of four stars), the titular heroine lists a few of her own role models -- Bessie Smith, Odetta, Nina Simone -- and admits, "I don't think I sing like them. I think I sound like a white chick singing the blues."

What the blues are, exactly, is a preoccupying concern in this musical tribute, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre. They can be, Joplin tells us at different points, "a good woman feelin' bad," or "the want of something," or occasionally "the devil himself."

Speaking these lines, Mary Bridget Davies, who plays the late '60s rock goddess, is utterly credible as a hippie icon, from her alternately blissed-out and earnest vibe to her groovy period costumes (the latter provided by designer Amy Clark).

Yet under the direction of Randy Johnson, who also wrote the book, Night offers a distinctly post-American Idol version of the blues. Davies is accompanied on stage by a band and four other spectacularly gifted female vocalists, who alternate as the backing "Joplinaires" and various artists whose work inspired Joplin's; and the fireworks they provide can border perilously on crowd-pleasing caricature.

In fairness, subtlety was never one of Joplin's virtues. A penchant for excess in life and art are central to the legend of this star that burned out at just 27; and Davies -- whose robust, gravelly singing uncannily evokes Joplin's -- both captures that bombast and mitigates it with an endearingly awkward sweetness. If her renditions of classics such as Piece Of My Heart and Ball and Chain are predictably, and authentically, over the top, the actress also brings palpable vulnerability and humility to Joplin's (often hokey) accounts of her youth, passion and loneliness.

Her co-stars have less opportunity to inject nuance into their performances. It's impossible not to marvel at the pure prowess of these singers -- among them Allison Blackwell, who veers from a stunning operatic reading of Summertime (also sung by Davies, copying Joplin's blues-rock cover) to a shivery, booming impersonation of Aretha Franklin; and De'Adre Aziza, whose earthier alto accommodates a folksy Odetta and a stately Simone.

But several numbers devolve into showboating. As a "Blues Singer," the tangy-voiced Taprena Michelle Augustine -- also a piquant Smith -- gets so melisma-drunk that the melody of Today I Sing The Blues is nearly obscured. Later, Spirit in the Dark is presented as a duet -- or a shouting match, more accurately -- between Blackwell's Franklin and Davies' Joplin.

At a recent preview, these numbers were among several that whipped the crowd into a happy frenzy. Indeed, those who believe that no note can be sung too loudly, or with too much melodrama, will find much to love in A Night With Janis Joplin.

The rest of us can at least admire the talent being displayed, exhaustively, before trudging home.