Five things to love about Children’s Musical Theaterworks’ ‘Bye Bye Birdie.’ Plus: You can win a four-pack of tickets to Friday’s performance.

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Now, on to my Top Five aspects and moments in the show that I like:

The direction. Randy Kohlruss takes an enormous cast, dozens of musical numbers, multiple settings, two rather strange ballet sequences and a complicated narrative – and still manages to keep things smooth and brisk. (The book, by Michael Stewart, can feel a bit clunky and obsolete; the opening scenes, for example, throw a lot of exposition at the audience in an old-fashioned way.) Kohlruss keeps the energy up and the laughter prominent. Besides, the plot isn’t all that hard to follow: A hunky, hip-swiveling pop singer named Conrad Birdie (loosely based on Conway Twitty, but there’s also a lot of Elvis in the character) is about to be drafted, and his record label sends him to small-town America to bestow “One Last Kiss” on a randomly selected 15-year-old girl.

Children's Musical Theaterworks

Isaac Mora Zuazo, left, and Ella Rutiaga perform in “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Ella Rutiaga as Rose Alvarez. Her strong voice and dance moves shine, and her performance of the song “Spanish Rose” – perhaps the thorniest moment in the show when it comes to racial politics – comes across not with anger or condescension but with a faintly snide aplomb. Directors and audiences for years have tried to figure out how to keep revivals of the show from coming across as racially offensive, mostly because of the scripted anti-Latino sentiments of Rose’s nightmare future mother-in-law, Mae (played with a persuasive bluster by Natalia Priolo.) I think Rutiaga’s self-confidence and take-charge attitude as Rose is probably the best antidote to the overt, dated obnoxiousness of the material.

Other talented performers. Isaac Mora Zuazo is a standout as Albert Peterson. He has the frantic, nebbish energy needed to make you almost believe that Albert could be a big-deal record executive. He has the charisma to command the stage. Abrahan Barajas, with a towering pompadour and shiny attire (there are so many fun costumes in the show, with credit to Emma Raymond, Justice and Peyton Cables), puts on some full-scale swoon as Conrad. Arturo Nevarez and Syd Galaviz, as put-upon parents, belt out “Kids” with style. Also, in a small but mighty role, Samantha Shaheen Smith plays uber fan Ursula with more enthusiasm per square syllable than you might think humanly possible. She made me laugh.

The look of the show. Dan Aldape’s sound and light design is stellar, as we’ve come to expect. What I like most is how the projections integrate with the scenic design (by Kohlruss). For example, I love the roll-on-unit bedroom set of Kim, the Conrad fan club president (played with a perky, nicely voiced intransigence by Noah Coleman). The textures, colors and details add a solidity to Aldape’s digital backdrop. My favorite visual moment in the show: a rack of garbage cans on a Sweet Apple Street. There is a mix of “real” and digital streetlights (a piercing bright yellow) against an aqua background dominated by groovy ‘60s hourglass and asterisk shaped designs. Best is a large, funky purple object that sort of reminded me of a surrealist Sputnik. The resulting blend of three-dimensional set pieces and the projection is just perfect in terms of proportion and depth. It’s the type of scenic design you could see on Broadway.

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The choreography. I had forgotten just how, well, odd some of the dance numbers are in “Bye Bye Birdie,” and it’s a testament to Kohlruss’ reverence toward the source material that he includes a couple of numbers (“One Hundred Ways Ballet” and “Shriner Ballet”) that might be cut in modern versions. “One Hundred” is Rose’s fantasy about all the ways she’d like to kill Albert; let’s just say a severed head gets thrown into the orchestra pit. Choreographer Maria Monreal shows a lot of creativity in exploring various ways to die, and she offers a more palatable version of “Shriner Ballet” (another odd number) than I’ve seen in other revivals. She shifts Rose from vixenish sex symbol to more of a kindergarten teacher leading her students. (I loved the human rolling pins.)

How much you view “Bye Bye Birdie” as satirical will depend, I’m guessing, on the lens through which you view the structure of American society. Some will latch on to the small-town American values typified by Sweet Apple and see it as nostalgic; others will roll their eyes at the quaint, dated notions of gender and race. (The song “How Lovely to be a Woman” practically begs to be performed in drag.) For me, the best part of watching young performers in an oldie-but-goodie show like this is seeing it through their eyes. In “The Telephone Hour,” which sparked that “going steady” earworm for me, the kids have to use these strange receiver handles with cords attached. Imagine that.