Dead ringer

In a salute to the early 20th century, Deadwood Dick features a trial, lots of shooting and invitations to the audience to boo and cat-call at will.

The real Deadwood Dick was a former black slave-turned-cowboy and rodeo rider named Nat Love (who died in 1921), but the Deadwood Dick of lore is either a brave hero in a Saturday matinee serial or a Robin Hood of the Black Hills in Edward L. Wheeler's dime novels.

In the melodrama Deadwood Dick, opening Thursday at the Leepa Rattner Museum, there is no Deadwood Dick, but the fair-haired hero, Ned Harris (Ian MacCallum, Verges in The Tempest) is accused of being a dastardly Deadwood Dick. The play is playwright Tom Taggart's adaptation of a Wheeler novel.

The show is the second in a series that is part of the museum's 10-year-long examination of the social, cultural and art history of a particular decade of the 20th century. It was launched in September with the George Bernard Shaw comedies, How He Lied to Her Husband and The Inca of Perusalem, and is expected to cover decades through 2000 in the future.

"Deadwood Dick is appropriate for the years 1910 to 1920," said Diana Forgione, who is directing the play. "It has some things that some might consider politically incorrect, but that's how it was in that time."

The action takes place in and around Calamity Jane's (Pennie Goldman, Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof) Man Trap Saloon, a dive in Deadwood Gulch in the Black Hills of North Dakota.

The nefarious Blackman Redburn (Fred Butler, Alonso in The Tempest) is looking for a mysterious map to a long-forgotten Blossom Mine, worth millions. He's convinced that the daughter of an old miner has the secret to the mine, and he is determined to find her and extract the secret.

It turns out that the miner had two daughters: the beautiful,but blind songbird, Lily (Star Dawn Verosic, Princess in The Inco of Perusalem), and the even more beautiful Rose (Kristin Bram, title role in Gypsy).

The plot is complicated when the wife of the sheriff, Molly Loveless (Nancy Miller, Mrs. Salieri in Amadeus), reveals a dark secret involving one of the young girls to her new friend, Calamity Jane. Molly is terrified that her husband, Sheriff Loveless (Zolman Cavitch, Dorante in The Would-Be Gentleman), will discover her shame.

Onto the scene comes the fair-haired Ned, who has abducted Rose - with Rose's loving permission. He's helped out of his predicament his friend, Wild Bill Hickock (David Broughton, ensemble of Gypsy, Mack and Mabel), and Lily's faithful Chinese maid, Pong Ping (Annette Delligatti, Domina in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum).

There's a trial, lots of shooting, threats to maidenly virtue, a trilling piano, and invitations to the audience to boo and cat-call at will.

"This isn't serious drama by any means," Ms. Forgione said. "It's meant to be fun, and we have a lot of fun with it."

The cast are members of Avenue Players, a 10-year-old theatrical company that has done more than 20 classic productions, from Shakespeare to Moliere, Shaw and now an oldtime melodrama.

WHAT: Deadwood Dick

WHERE: Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs campus of St. Petersburg College, on Klosterman Road (about half a mile west of U.S. 19).

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday and May 8, 9 and 15; 2 p.m. May 4 and 10

TICKETS: $8 for nonmembers, $5 for members. Call (727) 712-5762

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