In short, the play achieves something remarkably rare for a jazz-inflected musical: the performers sound like jazz singers, not musical theatre singers trying to be jazz singers.

Note that this cast is truly so good that a different audience member on a different night might well come up with a completely different list of compliments with no crossover in actors mentioned and be absolutely correct in the assessment.

Dance is the centerpiece here, and the whole production is built to show it off, which it does with aplomb.

To sing a bulk of Little Fish: the Herculanean Nicole Laurenzi, a New York transplant who puts a flicker of life in this cipher’s eye and propels her Charlotte to the very last lap. She is a most welcome addition to Chicagoland, for sure.

And when it glitters, be as gay as you want. This cast certainly does. Ben Barker and Cecilia Iole, respectively as the naive lovers Candide and Cunegonde, are dunderheaded and easily tossed about, but charming and sympathetic, and sing sing sing so well.

But really, for as much as the title promises gleeful defiance and destruction (and occasionally delivers), it’s really a song cycle of self-actualization. So when she really opens up at the end with the concluding thesis, “Almost There,” it lands...it really lands.