Entertainment Columnists

THEATER: Self-worth sells at Lyric Stage

10:31 AM CDT on Monday, September 26, 2005

IRVING – Hurricane Rita might not have brought our neighborhood the rain we've been needing, but Lyric Stage has delivered us a torrent – both literally and figuratively.

NAN COULTER/Special Contributor

110 in the Shade brought a sense of the prairie's wide open spaces to the stage with simple sets.

The company opened 110 in the Shade, the centerpiece of its festival devoted to the work of Texans Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, on Saturday. This musical adaptation of N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker marked one of the high points in lyrical realism on Broadway in the early 1960s. Lyric Stage's spiffy production, perfect in almost every way, proved once again the worth of this gentle masterpiece.

Mr. Nash himself opened up his original script about Lizzie (Laurie Bulaoro), a single woman who keeps house for her father and two brothers. The local sheriff, File (Greg Allen), seems to care for her but refuses to take another chance on love. Starbuck (James Wesley), a drifter and probably a con man, tries to convince Lizzie she's not the homely spinster she fears she is.

Mr. Schmidt's music and Mr. Jones' lyrics have clearly learned the lessons of early Rodgers and Hammerstein. 110 in the Shade shares the feeling of wide open spaces that Oklahoma! brought to the American musical, and both Lizzie and Starbuck sing monologues modeled on the one in Carousel.

But 110 in the Shade's homespun honesty is all its own. We do get some lively choruses and a comic female character not in the original play. But 110 in the Shade looks more closely and more naturally at its characters than the grander, more extroverted R&H shows. That's what the plot is all about – learning to know ourselves for what we are, not undervaluing our own worth and not being ashamed to have simple dreams.

The cast performs brilliantly from top to bottom. Director Cheryl Denson has made sure that everyone dispenses with hokum and turns in a genuine performance. Ms. Bulaoro has done some fine work around here in earlier years, but the voice seems richer and purer now and the acting surer and deeper. It's amazing that she could have brought this off with only a few weeks' rehearsal.

Mr. Wesley emphasizes the dreamy, romantic side of Starbuck. He can certainly raise the necessary ruckus in his entrance number, "The Rain Song." But you're more likely to come away remembering his beautifully sung ballads. Mr. Allen has to make the rather icy sheriff a credible rival for the more charismatic Starbuck, and he does just that.

The designers create the drought-ridden prairie with the simplest of means. Susan A. White's lighting knits the other elements into a poetic whole. When the onstage downpour finally comes at the end, you just wish it could go on longer.

E-mail ltaitte@dallasnews.com

110 in the Shade, presented by Lyric Stage at Irving Arts Center's Dupree Theater, 3333 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving, through Oct. 15. Runs 150 min. $25 to $30. Call 972-252-2787, or go to www.lyricstage.org.