STAGE REVIEW : TEXAS TALE’S REALITY DIES IN TRANSIT

Pity poor Miss Edna--a working girl with a mission. She was handed the proprietorship of a hallowed Texas institution that predated the Civil War. OK, so it was a whorehouse; it was a nice whorehouse. Like McDonald’s, Miss Edna’s establishment was clean and neat, the service high-volume, low-priced and delivered with a smile.

Was Miss Edna rewarded for her efforts? Sure, handsomely--that is, until a TV commentator denounced her on the air and her former patrons were shamed into closing her down. After that, the only money to be made from her business was in the form of memories. In 1974, Texan Larry L. King wrote it up for Playboy as “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and later collaborated with fellow Texan Peter Masterson on a successful, award-winning 1978 Broadway musical of the same name.

Now Starlight has the story through Sept. 20. And quite a challenge it is. For the story of the madam, who in the musical is called Miss Mona, is designed to be at once a tale of an exuberant sexual celebration, an indictment of political hypocrisy and a poignant saga of girls for whom the tender-hearted Mona provides the only stability and kindness they have ever known.

Directors Don and Bonnie Ward try valiantly to pull it all into a neat package, but despite some rollicking and even touching moments, the show never comes together. What is remarkable is the idea that it ever did. Texas charm can lead you down some mighty long, dark roads, but it’s hard not to come to an abrupt stop when Miss Mona’s is painted as a quasi-halfway house in which a sexually abused girl’s decision to become a whore is shown as a way of rebuilding her self-esteem.

The problem is certainly not in the performances. Nanci Hunter is as prickly sweet a Mona as could be wished, delivering composer and lyricist Carol Hall’s rousing ode to her business, “A Lil’ Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place” and a crooning hymn to a new arrival, “Girl, You’re a Woman,” with earthy flair. Reina Bolles and Mindy Hull are so appealing as Miss Mona’s new girls that they float safely above the cliche-ridden aspects of their two-dimensional parts.

As the waitress who sings wistfully of wanting to be part of Miss Mona’s crew, Alice McMasters brings a fine voice and much spirit to a role that is nearly inexplicable. Terrah Smith lends style and some exciting dancing, although not as strong a voice, to the utterly incomprehensible character of Mona’s maid, Jewel.

James C. Manley is inspired as the flag-waving TV man with the tattletale spirit one loves to hate. J. Sherwood Montgomery projects much charm as the impossible-to-pin-down governor. He is, however, the only one here to suffer in comparison with the 1982 movie role for which Charles Durning won an Academy Award nomination for doing such a wonderful turn singing “The Sidestep.”

The first reaction to Peter Palmer as the hard-cussing sheriff is relief that he is not Burt Reynolds. The second is that he is very good, albeit not much of a singer, in one of the more complex roles in the show. The dynamic between the gruff sheriff and Miss Mona is a highlight of the play, at once suggesting the sweet, if unspoken, affection between two individuals and the town and Miss Mona’s house. It is because of Palmer’s and Hunter’s performances that both these levels work at once.

Ken Holamon’s set works even more literally on two levels. The top, where the whorehouse business is conducted, is a constant throughout the show, sometimes highlighted and sometimes dimmed as background for the diner or the governor’s mansion. The costumes, by Tara, are, along with the lighting by Barbara Du Bois, the most colorful aspect of the design.

The most attention-grabbing aspects of the Wards’ choreography are the numbers originally designed by Tommy Tune, who directed the show (with Masterson) for Broadway: the identical blonde cheerleaders dancing with identical blonde cheerleader mannequins on each arm; and the football players in the locker room, carousing and stomping like hormones in cowboy hats.

Despite some strong individual deliveries and nice on-stage country music by a seven-piece band under the musical direction of Jeff Rizzo, the numbers as a whole lack the punch that might from moment to moment make one forget the show’s implausibility.

And that implausibility is the real culprit in this production. Indeed, the most curious thing about the whole show is that so much unreality can have originated from fact.

“THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS” Book by Larry L. King and Peter Masterson. Music and lyrics by Carol Hall. Directed and choreographed by Don and Bonnie Ward. Sets by Ken Holamon. Lighting by Barbara Du Bois. Costumes by Tara. Sound by Bill Lewis. Music director is Jeff Rizzo. With Peter Palmer, Nanci Hunter, James C. Manley, Terrah Smith, J. Sherwood Montgomery, Reina Bolles, Mindy Hull and Alice McMasters. At 8:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. At Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl, San Diego.