May 2, 2008

Musical recounts fate of famous brothel

By John Angell Grant / Theater Reviewer

It's a clean brothel, with no perversions. So insists the madam of the Chicken Ranch, the famous Texas bordello that was shut down in 1973 following a Houston television reporter's expose.

The story of the Ranch's last tumultuous year is told to singing and dancing in composer Carol Hall's wonderful, award-winning 1978 Broadway hit-musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." The show is getting an infectiously humorous community production at the Historic Hoover Theatre in San Jose, presented by Actors Theatre Center.

"Whorehouse" feels a bit like "Little House on the Prairie" meets "Cabaret." It hits on the peculiar polarity in American puritan emotions that divides the sanctimonious from the lewd, spawning hypocritical public outrage and self-righteousness.

"Best Little Whorehouse" recounts the tumult that ensued in 1973 when a consumer affairs television reporter did a story on the Chicken Ranch. The brothel had been in business for more than 100 years.

Flying under the radar, it was patronized by Texan politicians and law enforcement officials. As one character in the show remarks tongue-in-cheek, 1973 marks a battle between pure good and pure evil.

The play is aware of this simplistic duality and comments on it. This is the simplistic and hypocritical American public morality that causes people in more mature and sophisticated countries to shake their heads in wonder. The show had a four-year run on Broadway.

In the set-up for "Best Little Whorehouse," the Chicken Ranch poses as a happy, crime-free brothel, run by a madam who has important politicians and law enforcement in her camp. Against this happy humorous background emerge creepy and sad elements.

The women of the Chicken Ranch are forced into their work because of limited economic options. One new brothel worker calls home to her mom about the money she's making and talks to her young son on the phone.

It's disturbing to find that another new recruit was molested by her father. There is an established link between prostitution and women with that experience.

The musical, put together by a Texas woman, composer/lyricist Carol Hall, recognizes these issues and comments on them. This gives the play its depth.

In the local production, with the early musical number "Texas Has a Whorehouse In It," sleazy Doug Baird steals the spotlight with a wild but well-controlled vaudeville performance as the hypocritical investigative television reporter Melvin P. Thorpe.


Terri L. Weitze's wailing "24 Hours of Lovin'" is another song highlight, portraying a Chicken Ranch worker planning a day off in town with her boyfriend.

Lawrence-Michael C. Arias has a very funny scene as the foulmouthed local sheriff, media un-savvy, and caught on camera expressing to the reporter an expletive-laced small-town Texas tirade, filled with creative obscenities.

As brothel operator Mona, Linda McKee performs the touching and wonderful song "The Bus to Amarillo," groping to define her long-term romantic relationship with the town's sheriff who, like so many men, is unable to express himself honestly to a woman.

Musical accompaniment for the songs in this South Bay production comes from a sweet six-person country-flavored band, including pedal steel guitar and fiddle. Director Jeff Hicks has sanitized the show a bit, toning down some of the brothel workers' outrageous performances, and that's a loss.

There's something very American about this play, very truth identifying, and very sad, behind its rowdy tale of good ole boys and the women who entertain them.

Rating: Three stars

E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@yahoo.com.