Encores! keeps getting closer and closer to complete productions, and the exhilaration one experiences turns to sadness at he idea that such good work has a closing night. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is an example. Randy Skinner’s choreography is extensive and admirable. With David C. Woolard as costume consultant, some of the results are delightfully hilarious, such as the chorus gals wearing hats topped by huge cocktail glasses, or appearing in the motif of large buttons (zippers and buttons figure in the plot) used like pasties. The Encores! Orchestra, with Rob Berman as music director, is an attraction in itself, and John Rando’s overall direction pulls everything together with snap and sizzle.

Getting to specifics, Hilty is a bundle of curvy dynamite. Her Lorelei makes gold-digging seem like a natural career. On the one hand she projects utter innocence, while on the other she is a master schemer who knows how to wiggle her charms and use her voice with effects that can be sweet, boisterous or guttural. She can milk a double-entendre (”where I was reaaaared”) with the best of them. She makes the Jule-Styne-Leo Robin numbers “I’m Just a Little Girl from Little Rock” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” the show-stoppers they are meant to be. Hilty embodies the very concept of a Broadway musical star and I look forward eagerly to see her again as soon as possible.

Rachel York is an appealing plus as Lorelei’s companion Dorothy Shaw on a journey that begins on the Ile de France and winds up in Paris. The book by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, filtered through this concert adaptation by David Ives, is totally nutty, serving up a situation, for example, in which Olympic athletes can be aboard ship and join York in the lively number “I Love What I’m Doing.” She’s a knockout and so are the muscular men.

Another favorite number of mine offers Simon Jones as the henpecked Sir Francis Beekman, who is always ogling pretty woman, getting to team with Hilty and the ensemble singing “It’s Delightful Down in Chile,” a song with the gay abandon typical of such mindless musical frolics.

The show boasts some terrific dancing. Megan Sikora is amusing as the always-rehearsing dancer Gloria Stark, who in a Paris nightclub is finally turned loose with Phillip Attmore and Jared Grimes in a rousing exhibition of tap, and in the case of Sikora, an array of dance permutations that give an extra lift to the show.

The cast is large and well-chosen, including Debora Rush as the booze-loving Mrs. Ella Spofford, whose son Henry (Aaron Lazar), is sweet on Dorothy and tries to keep his mother on Moxie instead of the hard stuff, but she is ever resourceful. Clarke Thorell is Gus Esmond, Jr., who manufactures buttons and is Lorelei’s rich find, and Brennan Brown, turns up as Gus Esmond Sr. Stephen R. Buntrock plays Josephus Gage, a health nut and zipper manufacturer.The host of other supporting players add to the non-stop fun.

John Lee Beatty is scenic consultant, and as always, it is amazing what a few scene suggestions can do—a ship’s railing, a gangplank, a glittering curtain.