Laura Kennedy. Sally Mayes, Teri Ralston, Gina Stewart,
Lisa Vann Photo by Carol Rosegg
Good Ol’ Girls? “Girls”? Why “Girls” That’s kinda too “nice”, too proper like, too dainty. Why not “Gals”? Good Ol’ Gals seems inevitable as a handle, as a title. Yeah… but… “Gals” doesn’t leave leeway to be more than just “gals”. So…there’s an agenda here. Aha. Give it a try? Give it a try.
Well, I lost it. If you don’t go to see Good Ol’ Girls that’s your tough luck. It was almost mine. Go see a show with an over-the-hill female cast doing country music? Out of your mind. Country music is punishment enough let alone the prospect of tired femmes (my not very P.C. friend calls them “broads”) shaking shaky flesh and leering through too much makeup not covering what it’s s’posed to. Wrong. Wrong. And wrong. Firstly, my god, they actually look good, they do not shake except what they want to shake. A little weird, one or two – after all they‘re doing their thing – but good, yes, indeed. And costume designer Michael Bevins has dressed them smartly. The legs of the only one in a dress, belonging to that incredible Lauren Kennedy, are such killers you feel sure the others also have bonanzas in their pants. Sexist? Well, let me put it this way: the black box house holds about 50, all seats filled, with forty-seven female bottoms and three male. Sisterhood rampant. Who’s sexist? And every one of those good ol’ gals on the stage played to those too few males, knowing they had the rest of the audience in their pockets anyway. Sexist? Of course. Country music is sexist, racist and bigoted. It’s got roots deep in the, well, country. Get over it.
Against set designer Timothy Mackabee’s huge road map of the Carolinas plus bits of Georgia (it’s actually a giant scrim with the best damn band behind, and, yes, you do get to see ‘em) are assorted beat up chairs, variously occupied by Lauren Kennedy, Sally Mayes, Teri Ralston, Liza Vann and Gina Stewart who play and sing Country so persuasively you think every single number is an out and out smash. Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman wrote the score, so savvy, so calculated some of the numbers sound genuine. Totally pro. Like the cast. They start out so slick you’d think they were Teflon tootsies. Director Randal Myler made a choice. You wish you’d see the real women under the coating, heard the real songs under the gloss – that’s if you care a hoot in hell about country music.
Then – something happens. You get to know Lauren and Teri and Sally and Liza and Gina. There’s real there, and in their manufactured corn there’s real there, too, real emotion, real feelings. The monologues, the stories the incidents between the songs, carefully written by Paul Ferguson based on stories by Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, get to you. You’ve got tears in your eyes that match the tears in the eyes of these marvelous dames, these grand ladies, these wonderful bimbos. And you never saw it coming. Teri’s account of the birth of a baby may be the simplest, most profound, most touching seen on local stages. Sally’s appreciation of her plain ol’ boy husband hits you hard. Their scene of two bereft ladies in a nursing home crazy with grief shakes you. Lauren turns boy friends into failed marriage prospects so deftly it seems fresh and new. No, it’s grown into a show you don’t want ever to stop. So who knew?
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street. Tickets: $70. 212-352-3101, 866-811-4111, theatermania.com. Mon,Tue,Fri,Sat 8 pm, Mats Wed, Sat, Sun 3 pm.