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Entertainment

'Whorehouse,' like real life, has grit

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published October 8, 2005

Among all the enthusiastic accolades I heard for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre on opening night last week, I heard a couple of grumblings.

"Wasn't anything like the movie," one woman said in an unhappy tone.

"There wasn't a happy ending," a gentleman muttered.

They were both right; the movie starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds was funnier and happier than the stage show, but in my opinion, a forgettable, syrupy version of the wonderfully gritty little original.

The movie added a soaring love song, I Will Always Love You, later made famous by Whitney Houston, and a romantic link between the sheriff and the woman who runs the whorehouse. The ending was like Pretty Woman, in which the prostitute wins the good guy.

But that's not the story of the Chicken Ranch (so named because patrons paid in chickens during the Great Depression) as it really happened, and it's not the story written by the writers of Best Little Whorehouse.

Like real events, the original show ended poignantly, with no deus ex machina, god from a machine, to bring about a sudden rescue and jolly outcome. Considering the characters and the circumstances, it could end no other way.

To me, changing the original to make it happy go lucky would be like changing the end of Romeo and Juliet (West Side Story) so that the tragic, star-crossed lovers end up skipping through a field of flowers, or, as Merlina Mercouri's Ilya suggested in Never on Sunday, having Medea take her kids on a picnic instead of killing them as revenge on their faithless father, her husband Jason.

Life is often tragic, and good writing, whether it's farce, comedy, melodrama or drama, is best when it rings true.

Actually, many of Broadway's very finest musicals end on an unhappy or tragic note: Miss Saigon, Cabaret, Les Miserables, Sweeney Todd, Evita, even Fiddler on the Roof. Why not Best Little Whorehouse?

The Chicken Ranch, which was closed in the 1970s, was about 80 miles west of where I was working as a cub reporter, and I watched this story unfold right under my nose. I had met some of the people involved, the dramatic television personality Marvin Zindler, the model for Melvin P. Thorpe in the musical, and Sheriff Flournoy, the model for Ed Earl Dodd, the last lawman to tacitly sanction the Chicken Ranch.

The details in the musical are eerily accurate if you listen closely to the lyrics and script, and the hypocritical attitudes of the politicians and bystanders are right on the mark. Because the story is real, presenting it realistically is sad, but satisfying.

Despite all that, Best Little Whorehouse is also hilariously funny in parts. Was there ever a more riotously cynical song than The Sidestep?, in which the Texas governor is questioned about the whorehouse, gives an almost endless answer and doesn't say a blessed thing?

And the raw, mindless lust of the hypocritical Senator Wingwoah - who rents the Chicken Ranch for the young football players who win the Texas-Texas A&M Thanksgiving Day game and stays around to enjoy his favorite lady - is a deliciously giggly sight to behold.

But it's the basic story that is heart-tugging and worth time and attention and thought.

Nathan Golub often starred in musicals and plays at River Ridge High School (Arsenic and Old Lace, Pippin, Godspell) in the late 1990s, and he won numerous local awards for his artwork. He is now a guitarist-singer with the Cadillac Stepbacks bluegrass band in North Carolina. Golub will be in the orchestra for the Raleigh Ensemble Players' version of Best Little Whorehouse Nov. 17 to 20. When he's not pickin' and singin', Nathan is a graphic designer for the Raleigh Independent newspaper.

Stage West Community Playhouse stalwart > Madeline Child once more stepped up to the plate for theater's recent comedy, Table Manners, when lead player M.J. Rice was hospitalized for a few days. Script in hand, Child played Sarah, the sensible sister in the British comedy. Rice checked herself out of the hospital on the last day of the show, went home, washed her hair, put on her stage makeup, went to Stage West and did her role.

"Didn't know if I could do it or was just plain crazy for trying?" Ms. Rice wrote me in an e-mail. "Happy to say, all went well and I even attended the cast party."

Actor/singer Candler Budd, who was once a regular at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre (Mr. Cellophane in Chicago, Second Banana in Sugar Babies; John Smith in Run for Your Wife), now a resident of New York City, has signed a contract to come back for one more show. He'll play opposite Matthew McGee in The Odd Couple, the Neil Simon favorite about two roommates who are totally different.

The show runs June 2 to July 23.

The Ken Whitener comedy/illusion shows at the Palace Grand in Spring Hill continue to be sold out within moments of being announced, and the one on Friday was no different.

The good news is that Whitener has already signed to come back for one more show on Feb. 10. As before, the tickets are $15, plus tax, with a two-beverage minimum. Call (727) 863-7949 or toll-free 1-888-655-7469.

Patrons of the musical Puttin' on the Ritz at the Show Palace Aug. 19 to Sept. 25 were not only generous with their applause, they were generous with their donations to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

During the last few weeks of the show, the actors asked the audience to donate to the victims. By the end of the run, they had collected $7,425.

A table full of Red Cross professionals and volunteers were at the opening night of Best Little Whorehouse to accept the big check from Show Palace artistic director Matthew McGee.

[Last modified October 8, 2005, 01:26:19]