By BEN BRANTLEY

There they were, the girls who made you love them and then disappeared, turning up like the bad-penny dames in private-eye novels. They only stuck around for a couple of nights in their slinky silks and satins. But that was long enough for them to win and break hardened hearts all over again.

In a kinder world Kristin Chenoweth, Melissa Errico, Donna Murphy and Vanessa L. Williams would each be ruling her own Broadway musical. The times and the theater as they are, these delectably talented women are more usually found in sitcoms and action movies. But every so often they show up to tantalize Manhattan theater audiences with glamorous visions of what could be.

The most recent occasion for such fantasies was provided, as it often is, by the Encores! series of American musicals in concert at City Center. Though this invaluable program's official season doesn't begin for a few months, its producers saw fit to provide an appetite-whetting sampler of vintage numbers delivered by latter-day stars.

The show, seen Sunday and yesterday under the title "Broadway Bash!," was patchy, as samplers are. But it offered plenty of goose-bump-raising moments. And they usually involved little more than a woman, a song and a top-flight orchestra.

Consider for example the spectacle of Ms. Chenoweth's making like a gilded canary with the "Italian Street Song" from Victor Herbert's "Naughty Marietta." Ms. Chenoweth, who won a Tony for playing an angst-ridden preschooler in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," is usually not thought of as today's answer to Jeanette MacDonald.

And yet there she was trilling to beat the band — quite a feat when the band is the Coffee Club Orchestra — with moon-shot high notes and a steel-melting smile. And there she was again, her voice and persona remade in pure brass for "You've Got Possibilities" from the 1966 musical "It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's Superman."

For the finale Ms. Chenoweth matched Howard McGillin's manly tenor with a blushing soprano in the swooning Kern-Hammerstein duet "All the Things You Are." Ms. Chenoweth has been working to a laugh track in California. But the small screen doesn't begin to transmit her joyful intensity or talents. It's time to come home, Ms. Chenoweth.

Ditto for Ms. Williams, last seen at City Center undulating her way through "St. Louis Woman." Wearing two spectacularly sinuous evening dresses, she exhaled her singularly effortless sensuality in the sassy "Loads of Love" from Richard Rodgers's "No Strings" (1962) and the ravishing, little-known "Lazy Afternoon" from Jerome Moross and John Latouche's "Golden Apple" (1954).

Ms. Errico, the goddess from the Encores "One Touch of Venus," was done wrong several seasons ago by the clunky Broadway version of the movie "High Society." That she deserves much better was amply evident in "Broadway Bash!," especially in her slyly understated "What Makes Me Love Him?," from "The Apple Tree" (1966).

I knew that song, but I was unfamiliar with "There's a Room in My House," a charming courtship duet from "A Family Affair" (1962) performed by Ms. Errico and the droll, pure-voiced Jason Danieley ("The Full Monty").

And I was glad to be introduced to a deadpan comic solo from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1951), piquantly rendered by Alix Korey, and a mating song from "Donnybrook!" (1961), given ribald life by two zesty pros, Karen Ziemba and Gary Beach.

With saucy choreography by Kathleen Marshall, who staged the production, these numbers reminded you of how quickly and thoroughly a song can paint a portrait. Under Rob Fisher's direction, the orchestra and backup chorus brought out every ounce of emotional detail in the scoring.

If majesty was called for, Mr. Fisher and company provided it. The sublime Ms. Murphy, a two-time Tony winner who sent off fireworks for Encores! with "Wonderful Town" two season ago, conveyed majesty and more with an 11 o'clock number that stopped the show. The song, by Cole Porter, had a deceptively casual title, "I Happen to Like New York."

But this was no blithe ode to urban pleasures à la "We'll Take Manhattan." "I Happen to Like New York" is from "The New Yorkers" (1930), and it has the haunting Depression- era grit and gravity of that show's biggest hit, "Love for Sale."

A repetition of one stark melody, rising in different keys to a bell- tolling climax, this lesser-known song exudes a hard-shelled sentimentality that is the essence of New York City. The same could be said of Ms. Murphy, standing stock still in a spotlight in a beaded sheath, her velvet voice woven with a defiance that suggested, "What's it to you, buddy?"

The song's narrator concludes that given the choice of heaven or hell when she dies, she would prefer to stay in New York. As Ms. Murphy worked her way into this priceless summing up of New York arrogance, you could feel the whole house shivering.

If New York is in search of an anthem, it couldn't do better than this. And by the way, if she could bring the same qualities of control and command to politics that she brought to this number, Ms. Murphy would make a fabulous mayor.

CITY CENTER ENCORES! BROADWAY BASH!
A concert conceived by Jack Viertel, artistic director; Rob Fisher, musical director; and Kathleen Marshall, director in residence. Staging by Ms. Marshall; sound by Scott Lehrer; lighting by Mark Mongold; production stage manager, Beverley Randolph; musical coordinator, Seymour Red Press. Presented by City Center, Judith E. Daykin, president and executive director. At 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Gary Beach, Kristin Chenoweth, Jason Danieley, Melissa Errico, Christopher Fitzgerald, Randy Graff, Alix Korey, Howard McGillin, Donna Murphy, Jubilant Sykes, Vanessa L. Williams, Carol Woods and Karen Ziemba.

Vanessa did the limited 2 nights broadway show "Broadway Bash" on November 18/19, 2001