‘World Goes ’Round’ with love, laughter

In 1991, director Scott Ellis, choreographer Susan Stroman, and librettist David Thompson devised a Kander & Ebb musical revue, “The World Goes ’Round’’ (title from a song the team wrote for Liza Minnelli to sing in the film “New York, New York’’), which drew from these more obscure shows as well as the familiar ones. “The World Goes ’Round’’ may not have prompted a ton of Kander & Ebb revivals, but it’s an engaging two-and-a-quarter-hour sampler of songs you wouldn’t otherwise hear, and the current New Repertory Theatre production puts it across with wit, pizzazz, and some genuinely torchy singing.

There’s no plot, only five lonely individuals - three women, two men - looking for love and trying to make sense of the crazy world they live in. Erik D. Diaz’s set has music director Todd C. Gordon’s band (keyboard, flute/clarinet/sax, bass, percussion) on an upper level, next to what looks like the railing on a cruise ship. Down below, doors and tables and prams and tall black stools are unobtrusively brought on and taken off.