Ranger Rick (Regan Adair) and his pal Lightning ponder gay love on the prairie in Pegasus Theatre's joyously silly Southwestern premiere.
Details
Cowboys!
runs through June 23 at Pegasus Theatre, 3916 Main St. Call (214) 821-6005.
M.A.N.I.F.E.S.T.O. 2001 runs through June 10 at the Ridglea Theatre, 6025 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth. Call (817) 738-9500.
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New York-based, Oklahoma-born playwright Clint Jeffries, who has had an artistic home with Christopher Street's Wings Theatre Company since 1986, is far from the only country boy drawn to a major theatrical Mecca with footlights in his eyes. But he has chosen a somewhat unorthodox way to create small stage works and sustain himself while living in a very expensive city: He writes pornography. More than eight blue books penned under various nommes de smut have kept the utilities on while Jeffries concentrated on scribbling goofy, if unusually good-natured, comedies of rural manners and gay realities.
His most successful to date (in that it was given two separate, well-sold productions in his adopted city) is the musical Cowboys! with sometime collaborator Paul Johnson. I recently witnessed its laudable and highly unusual Southwest premiere by Pegasus Theatre and was disarmed not so much by its originality (there's not an ounce to be tapped here) as by its utterly unpretentious devotion to cornpone conventions. You get the sense that Jeffries and Johnson have written a book and score that Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers might've starred in during their early days, before they became famous enough to choose their own material--assuming, of course, that Ritter and Rogers liked to swap spit on the dusty prairie. The wild Westerners of the title are, almost to a man, admirers of the masculine form, and they've sought refuge at the Straight Arrow Ranch under the protection of Rosie Ritter (played in Dallas by Rebekah Durk, strolling her way with thumbs in belt buckle through a winning Marjorie Main impression). This may seem like a one-joke premise--and if all goes well, in a few years it will be--but the tiny innovation that the joyously silly Cowboys! achieves is to offer up gay men free of the constraints of urban ghetto, stylish angst, political scars and insider-speak. The emphasis here is on people not issues. In other words, it's gay escapism of the most desperately needed kind. Armies of so-called homo-clones may protest--Where are all the community references?! But Jeffries and Johnson's show frees us to gawk at all the boys kissing--and in set designer Bryan Wofford's coloring-book page of a bright blue-sky ranch entrance, it's a little jarring at first even for the initiated--and eventually forget all the friction between context and content and settle back for a series of well-timed performances.
Rosie Ritter is about to lose the Straight Arrow to a bank, so her boys decide to put on a show of roping, shooting and high kicking to save it. Meanwhile, other, more sinister factors are in play. Black Bart (Pat Watson) and Lilly Luscious (Rachel Schnitzius) want the deed to retrieve the oil that bubbles underfoot and are willing to seduce to get it. Unfortunately, prime target Ranger Rick (Regan Adair, easily the show's best crooner) responds better to baritone voices and facial hair than lace and perfume, so the pressure's on Black Bart to pique--or is that peak?--Rick's interest.
There are numerous lively belly laughs to be taken from Cowboys!, including Lilly Luscious' countrypolitan Patsy Cline knockoff titled "I Fall to Faded Pieces After Midnight When Your Sweet Dreams Drive Me Crazy" and "The Girl From Texarkana," in which black-wigged Raymond Banda as Judge Sassafras dons a white dress to distract Black Bart with an invitation to romance that resembles a pro wrestling match. But it's Watson as Black Bart who gives Cowboys! more depth than probably the authors (and maybe Dallas director Andi Allen) intended. At Pegasus Theatre, Watson has already done assured, relaxed comic versions of Jesus Christ and a George W. Bush-like gubernatorial candidate. His long, pained wooing of Ranger Rick--sidling up to him with wary eyes and a fake come-hither smile--culminates in a smooch that melts Watson's whole body in a fantastic pratfall. Combining physical comedy and emotional conflict effectively is a tall order, but the versatile Watson possesses more than 10 gallons of virtuosity to pull it off.
The tiny second theater on the top floor of Fort Worth's Ridglea Theatre looks like it's more suited for stand-up comedy or, if they installed an overhead cabin for puppeteers, a marionette show. As it happens, there are variations on both of those entertainment forms featured in M.A.N.I.F.E.S.T.O. 2001, the festival of new short plays performed by the improv-minded MoonWater Theater Company. Just because they acknowledge in press materials that the acronym title of their annual showcase of original works is too long doesn't make it all better, but for your information, the name stands for "MoonWater's Annual New Imaginings Festival Exploring Society, Theater and Ourselves." The verbosity is supposed to be a detailed warning to people who might be after brainless theatrical kicks, although it sounds like one of those suspiciously ornate dodges for an ideological think tank. There is a political purpose here, in form if not in content. MoonWater coordinator Jeffrey Schmidt and his merry band choose one hotly discussed social issue each year and solicit short scripts from local and national playwrights to investigate it from a variety of angles (hopefully).
