GUILDERLAND — “42^nd Street” travels on the rhythms of tap dance.

A Depression-era novel became a 1933 Hollywood film, was recast as a Broadway musical in 1980 — and comes to the Guilderland High School stage this weekend. The musical is a salute to the Manhattan thoroughfare “where the underworld can meet the elite — naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty 42^nd Street,” as the song has it.

For the third show in a row, the Guilderland Players are presenting a play within a play. “42^nd Street” opens with a stage-struck ingénue — Peggy Sawyer portrayed by Megan Anders — arriving in New York City. She plays her part with a deft mixture of sweetness and grit as she tap dances her way into the hearts of a bevy of chorus girls and gets a spot in “Pretty Lady.”

When Peggy first heads out to lunch with the girls, one of them deigns to show her their routine. A skillful tap dance follows.

Peggy one-ups her teacher, echoing the solo — and then some.

She is accepted by the group, illustrated in their synchronized tap dancing.

The show was choreographed by Erin Hughes, who describes herself as “a GP alum from 2005.” GP stands for Guilderland Players, a loyal band of theater aficionados, many of whom come back year after year to help with high school productions, bringing skills that range from make-up and costumes to choreography and directing.

The director of “42^nd Street,” Christine Meglino, was also a Guilderland Player. Like Hughes, she graduated in 2005.

Meglino writes in her director’s notes of her love of tap. “When I was a child,” she writes in the play’s program, “my grandmother introduced me to tap-dancing legends such as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Shirley Temple. I would sit in front of the television for hours, completely entranced by their graceful movements that synced perfectly to the sounds of the taps on their shoes. Years later, I am still drawn to the intricacies of the sounds created by tap shoes.”

Addressing the audience, Meglino writes, “It is my hope that as you ‘hear the beat of dancing feet,’ you fall in love with the magic of tap dancing, just as I did many years ago.”

Hughes, who brings that magic to the Guilderland stage, is a research scientist for the Department of Health, working in the newborn screening laboratory. It’s her fifth year doing choreography for the Guilderland Players’ musicals. “I wanted to give back,” she said.” She is grateful for the friends she made and the sense of community she got from the Guilderland Players, she said. “It gave me confidence.”

She came up with the choreography that carries the show — ranging from slow waltzes to the predominate tap dancing. It appeared that those who auditioned must have already been skilled in the art of tap dance, but Hughes said that wasn’t so. “Most of them had never tap danced,” she said. She started with a few tap-dance workshops so they could learn basic steps, and then put together simple combinations.

Some of the dancing flows naturally with the action in the real-life storyline, as in the scene where the chorus girls meet Peggy.

This contrasts with numbers from the play within the play, which have all the stagy glitz of a 1930s showstopper. One of the numbers in the stage play starts with several girls in drab, heavy coats, on their hands and knees, searching for discarded coins. When one finds a dime, she throws up her hands and sings, “We’re in the money. The skies are sunny.”

As the girls in drab overcoats exit, on march girls in short white dresses with spiffily-clad guys — white tails and sparkling green bow ties —  dancing in perfect and intricate synchrony as they hold large dimes. When set on the ground, sometimes one on top of the other, the dimes become dance platforms — the perfect pedestal for tap.

How did Hughes come up with this? “I tap dance in my kitchen as I listen to the music,” she said

Creating empathy for a diva who is “a hot mess”

Peggy is at odds with the star of “Pretty Lady”— a diva past her prime, Dorothy Brock, played by Eliana Rowe who commands the stage when she’s on it. When Peggy trips on opening night, crashing into Dorothy, the pig-headed director, Julian Marsh, played by Winsor Jewell, fires Peggy on the spot. But, when the show is faced with closure because of Dorothy’s broken ankle, the chorus girls convince Julian that Peggy can play the lead. Dorothy comes to realize that Peggy is good and offers some advice.

Rowe, a senior who has shone in other Guilderland productions, is planning on a career in theater. She crosses her fingers, holding them up in front of her, as she says she’s been accepted at the Fordham School for Theater for next year and is just waiting to see if enough scholarship money comes through to make her dream a reality.

“Fordham has a lot of theater and show opportunities,” she says. “Every couple of months, the actors and the screenwriters get together in one room and talk about how to break down barriers.”

This is important to Rowe as an African American. “I want to break down barriers,” she said. “I don’t know that I’ve felt barriers here,” she said of being on stage at Guilderland but, she went on, African-American actors aren’t very prevalent on the stage, in movies, or on television. “We need to show young black girls and young black boys what their stories are. I could never turn on the TV to see people that look like me.”

She plays the part of the fading diva with a wide range of emotions. At times, she uses broad comedy. For instance, Dorothy is supposed to be someone who can’t dance — she’s given the lead role because she brings with her money to finance the show in the form of an admirer she loathes.  So, Rowe flails her arm with wild awkwardness as the skilled tap dancers surround her. Or, as she sings, with her shadow projected behind her, she makes shadow puppets with her hands.

“You are graceful,” interjects the choreographer, Hughes. Rowe shakes her head, no. “I’m kind of awkward in real life,” she says.

Other times, as Rowe portrays Dorothy Brock, her voice drips with irony. As her suitor, her sugar daddy, pursues her, she intones, “What girl wouldn’t want to be alone with you; just look at you.” Her sugar daddy, Abner Dillon, is played with sweet goofiness by Derek Petti, who wears his oversized black cowboy hat with aplomb.

The next moment, all fury, Rowe’s Dorothy spits fire at Julian Marsh, “You’re the director of the show, not of my personal life,” she hisses.

Later, she croons with soul-searing longing about the man she really loves, “I know now he’s the only one. I know now I’m the lonely one.”

How does Rowe see her character? “She’s a hot mess. She knows her career is fading. She’s overly dramatic, grabbing on as long as she can. Dillon is just for show so she can keep the lead. She loves Pat Denning but has too much pride to show it.”

How does she play a selfish prima donna for which the audience still has sympathy? “I try not to be a diva in real life,” says Rowe. “Dorothy acts like a diva, but she has a moldable heart.”

Rowe pauses for a moment to reflect on what happens in creating a character for the stage. “I like telling stories,” she says. “You get the audience to help you feel your way in what you’re playing….You can feel the response to what you are doing on stage.”

By playing different parts, Rowe says, by studying these characters, she gains empathy for people, even people who seem like jerks.

Rowe’s favorite song in “42^nd Street” is “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me.” “It’s so jazzy,” she says. “I love jazzy. It reminds me of Ella Fitzgerald. Her voice was so smooth, and she could scat seamlessly.”

Rowe’s musical background is rooted in jazz and gospel; she sang gospel at the Church of God of Prophecy in Albany.

Rowe concluded, “I took that and added a little bit of spiff.”

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“42^nd Street” plays at Guilderland High School, at 8 School Road in Guilderland Center, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, March 10, 11, and 12, at 7 p.m., and closes on Sunday, March 13, at 2 p.m.

Tickets cost $5, $7, or $10, based on seat location, and may be purchased at the door or reserved by phone at (518) 861-8591, ext. 6202.