Arts Correspondent

I haven't come across too many shows about a Scottish Jewish punk rock songwriter. In fact, Rooms, in its world premiere at Alexandria's MetroStage in a coproduction with Rochester's Geva Theater through Sept. 7, must be the only one. And it's a keeper, featuring electric performances by a pair of musical theater powerhouses ‹ Natascia Diaz and Doug Kreeger ‹ of Paul Scott Goodman's rock 'n' roll and punk-infested score.

This intimate story, following two young and hungry singer/songwriters as their careers take off and their relationship hits the skids, blows the roof off MetroStage's 130-seat theater.

With music and lyrics by Goodman, a nice Scottish, Jewish boy from Glasgow, and the book by Goodman and his wife, director, composer and writer Miriam Gordon, Rooms is not The Fiddler on the Roof your mother so lovingly remembers.

Gordon's witty and smart dialogue homes in on the quirks, foibles and flaws of these rising rockers, adding a dash of spice to middle-class Jewish rebel Monica Miller (Diaz) and a dose of depression to other-side-of-the-tracks loner Ian Wallace (Kreeger).

And Goodman's songs ricochet off the compact black-and-grunge stage, backed by a five-piece band lead by Jenny Cartney on keyboard, Steve Walker and Dave Boguslaw both on guitars, Dennis Turner on bass and Jon Jester on drums. The duo navigates their relationship in 16 songs, hard-driving rock anthems, ear-ringing punk and even a sweet rock ballad or two thrown into the fast-paced evening, unfurling like the hand-painted British flags at one point in 85 tightly compacted minutes.

Set in 1977, at the dawning of the punk and New Wave eras across the pond, when it was all about hair and attitude, rebellion and rock rage, Diaz in her laced go-go boots, miniskirt and shiny Lycra black tights gives Miller a tough exterior as a wannabe headbanger. But beneath her counterculture bluster, there's a nice Jewish girl, a little insecure, even a tad traditional in the way she still puts on a sweet dress for her family's Friday night Shabbat dinner.

And early in the intermissionless show, "Friday Night Dress" is one of the keeper numbers, simple, engaging and full of sage memories, not that far afield after all from another paean to Friday night candlelighting and blessing ‹ yes, Fiddler's "Sabbath Prayer."

But next up comes the funny, edgy "Scottish Jewish Princess," with its nod to alternative lifestyles. It's enough to raise eyebrows and knock the socks off guests attending the Katz bat mitzvah, Miller and Wallace's first gig.

As the duo gain notice and notoriety as punk purveyors soon after their arrival in London, Miller displays a hunger for success that her non-Jewish partner wants no part of.

"I just want to stay in me room with my records, my amp, my guitar and my lava lamp," he opines at one point in his Scottish brogue.

But his request falls on deaf ears. Miller's anthem, "All I Want Is Everything," flails with bluster, an unabashed flight of fancy that has Diaz soaring and shaking the rafters of this intimate theater space in a quest for recognition, being noticed for who she is and what she does. Later, partner Wallace's internal struggle with confidence and the bottle is heartbreakingly displayed in a finely sung and complexly crafted self-revelatory moment, "Fear of Flying."

Director Scott Schwartz and choreographer Matt Williams work with a bare stage, a pair of battered chairs and a scruffy, movable door, building up and tearing down the rooms that the pair inhabit and leave, the spaces they desire and reject as they grow up and away from their comfortable, but to them stifling, hometown, Glasgow.

Gordon and Goodman bring the right amount of conflict and control to this romantic memory play set in the grunge punk hangouts of London and New York. The twists and turns the pair takes aren't entirely unpredictable, but the commitment performers Diaz and Kreeger project in making this beautiful, brash and bountiful music into a love song is unimpeachable.

Rooms is at MetroStage in Alexandria through Sept. 7. Tickets, $40-$45, are available by calling 703-548-9044 or at www.metrostage.org.