We don’t like to admit that our tastes haven’t changed that much in 90 years, but Peter Stone knew it and took advantage of it by writing “The Will Rogers Follies,” which provided a way to bring back the Ziegfeld Girls and their leggy routines as the vehicle for a celebration of the life and career of Will Rogers. Whenever Will is not onstage – and sometimes when he is – the focus is on the precise and fluid movements of these dancers.

The show played at the Lied Center on Wednesday night, 15 years after its six Tony Award-winning Broadway run. Ziegfeld would have been gratified to see the colorful production numbers, with dancers in outfits ranging from cowboy/cowgirl to cow – the latter with six of the 11 New Follies Girls dressed in long hose and longhorns, and twirling their tails fetchingly. Later numbers saw yards of silk and sequins and feathers and enough Cuban walks to get from Miami to Havana.

Will Rogers himself was brought into Ziegfeld’s revue in 1916, because of his increasing popularity – and, more practically, to amuse the audience while the showgirls changed their costumes. Michael Zaller plays Will in this show, once again buying time for costume changes and recreating the role of the title character. Rogers’ appeal was never really his jokes but his manner: homespun, populist, self-deprecatory, warm. Zaller succeeds because he projects the manner convincingly.

At first a little put off by the disparity in appearance between the star’s face and Rogers’ face (displayed in stage-filling dimensions on a scrim at the start of the show), the audience relaxed as Zaller began his first monologue with a soft Oklahoma twang and a disarming smile. He played the harmonica, spun his rope and told local jokes – about Manhattan and about the Journal-World – gradually bringing the audience into something like Rogers’ own relations with his audiences. Chris McDaniel as Clem, his father, had a charm of his own as the down-to-earth, proud yet envious parent of an early superstar.

Amy Decker played Betty Blake, Rogers’ wife. The role encompasses most of the stage-wife conventions: misgivings about show business, all the traveling and adulation from strangers and long separations. Decker played it believably, and her vocal talent had the audience wishing for more songs. It’s not enough to say that she has a Streisand-like voice, but that’s the idea; and though she tamped it down for most of her numbers, the evening’s biggest applause came when she gave it some scope in the torchy “No Man Left For Me.”

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Choreography by director Steven Minning was effective and not overly complex, allowing smooth and dramatic movement across all eight tiers of Tony Walton’s set. Mike Baldassari’s lighting turned the set into whatever was needed, from a Ferris wheel to a neon theater marquee. The orchestra, directed by Steven Bishop, was always there with what was needed, from quiet “rope-spinning music” to rhythmic backing for the catchy hand-jive number, “The Campaign.” The company is in the third month of a tour that sometimes plays 15 nights without letup, but for two and a half hours they didn’t stint the Lied Center audience.

– Dean Bevan is professor emeritus of English at Baker University. He can be reached at bevan@ku.edu.