THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9601310148
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: THEATER PREVIEW
SOURCE: BY MONTAGUE GAMMON III
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
The Little Theater of Portsmouth will find itself on familiar and fertile ground when ``The Saloonkeeper's Daughter'' begins its run tonight.
Comic melodramas, such as this piece by Jack Sharkey and Dave Reiser, have been a stock in trade of this community group for about a dozen years. Director Tom Falls refers to the genre as ``our identity, our signature.''
Falls describes a story that sounds straight out of a Snidely Whiplash cartoon. Red White, played by Dick Green, owns a saloon. The villainous mortgage holder Manly Rasch, played by Adam Ivey, is threatening to foreclose on White. Rasch lusts after Red's daughter Lily White, who in turn loves Rusty Witts, a character the director calls ``the stupidest cowboy in the West.''
Marti Craver and Jim DiMunno play Lily and Rusty, who are joined by a host of other characters with off-the-wall names. There is Lily's ne'er do well brother Blackie White, along with Parson Kindly and his daughter, Charity. One character is called Seedy Schlepper, while three saloon girls go by the monikers Cinnamon Hickey, Sally Forth and Moly Bolt.
Falls turns reticent when asked about the show's ending. ``Everybody ends up happy,'' he says, ``and married to somebody.''
It sounds like he is hiding a twist in the plot that still promises a victory for the upright hero, a loss for the dastardly villain, and a triumph over all obstacles for true love.
Board President Alice Everhart, who is producer, costumer and a performer in this show, links the appeal of such pieces to the involvement they can provoke from audiences.
Patrons like the ``kind of audience participation'' that encourages them to cheer the good guys, boo the bad guys and sigh with the ingenue, she explains. ``They feel that they're part of what's going on.''
For all the deliberate, self-mockingly simple story line, the show apparently boasts some remarkably sophisticated musical numbers. Everhart mentions one choral piece that has the men singing one melody, the women another, ``in three-part harmony,'' and she uses the term ``contrapuntal'' in describing another composition.
There are songs titled ``The Western Life,'' and ``Never,'' which is the virtuous heroine's response to the villain's demand for marriage. Falls mentions the women singing ``Who wants to be a villain's bride?''
The key to success with such shows, which the Little Theater has found in the past, is to present them with the appearance of straight-faced sincerity while remaining aware that the script is a satire of itself.
The ``Saloonkeeper's Daughter'' should be a crowd pleasing production because the theater has plenty of experience in striking the right balance between those two poles. ILLUSTRATION: AT A GLANCE
What: ``The Saloonkeeper's Daughter,'' by Jack Sharkey and Dave
Reiser
Who: The Little Theater of Portsmouth
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and Feb. 9-10, and 2 p.m.
Sunday and Feb. 11.
Where: Wilson High School, formerly Manor High, Little Theater,
1401 Elmhurst Lane.
Tickets: 488-7866.
by CNB