URBAN COWBOY

1/2

At the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 W. 44th St.; (212) 239-6200

BOY gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back – all this and a whole lot of mechanical bull.

No one can accuse the new musical “Urban Cowboy,” which rode into town last night at the Broadhurst Theatre, of having an original story to tell.

But the musical is certainly better than you might have feared, and in most ways is surprisingly enjoyable.

In it are 23 musical numbers – including Mickey Gilley’s hit “Lookin’ for Love” and six new songs by music director Jason Robert Brown – but no cohesive score. Nevertheless, that bouncy country sound is very welcome on Broadway, even if the music illustrates this musical rather than drives it.

The show is based on the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” which is itself based on a non-fiction magazine article Aaron Latham wrote for Esquire.

The story (book by Latham and the late Philip Oesterman) is more Hollywood-cliché than enthralling.

Bud (Matt Cavenaugh) is a country Texas kid come to Houston to make his fortune working on the oil rigs before returning home to buy his own few acres, and Sissy (Jenn Colella) is the girl he finds at Gilley’s, a downtown Houston bar where blue-collars and white-collars mingle together in a Western dream-fantasy of cowboys and the gals who love ’em.

Essential to that dream is the bar’s mechanical bull – a contraption that mimics all the bucking rodeo functions of a real bull without the manure.

It is through that fearsome machine that Bud and Sissy get together, marry and split up.

Bud goes with Pam, a Neiman-Marcus rich girl (Jodi Stevens), and Sissy with a real-life outlaw, a convict on the run, Wes (Marcus Chait).

Fear not: It all ends happily. After all, so did “Oklahoma!”

The onstage band is terrific, and director Lonny Price’s beautifully slicked-up staging proves dexterously expert.

Choreographer Melinda Roy is probably the unluckiest woman on Broadway.

In any normal year, this newcomer’s inventively boisterous and bouncy choreography would have carried off the Tony Award on a mustang – but this is the Year of Tharp, and Twyla Tharp’s musical “Movin’ Out” very properly has a lock on that particular item.

Cavenaugh makes a splendid Bud, whose charm is as impressive as his abs – and he can sing, too – while Colella is a zippy, feminist and sexy Sissy.

Other very good showings come from Chait as the glowering, confident bad guy; Stevens as the slinky rich girl, and a dazzling duo, Leo Burmester and Sally Mayes, as cute as well-worn buttons as Bud’s uncle and aunt.

This ain’t the greatest show Broadway has ever seen, but it’s worth your time.