Theatre Review : Beethoven With a Twang

SAN DIEGO —  “Cowgirls,” the new feel-good, leave-your-brain-at-the-door musical, just opened at the Old Globe Theatre. Leave your brain at the door, but pick up a cowboy hat if you’re comin’ in, y’all.

Rita (Mary Ehlinger), Lee (Lori Fischer) and Mary Lou (Mary Murfitt) are a classical trio mistakenly booked into a country music saloon in Rexford, Kan., home of the world’s largest ball of twine. You only have to see these three play their Beethoven--bouncing in tiny, repressed increments--to know that they will be footloose and making music on wash buckets by the end of the first act.

The plot, conceived by “Oil City Symphony” co-creator Murfitt, is as thin as a sewing needle and easier to see through. Jo Carlson (Rhonda Coullet) runs the club, Hiram Hall. She inherited it from her dad, a tyrant who tried to control his wife by decreeing that no woman would ever sing there. Get this--Jo is going to open Hiram Hall to women for the first time and she is about to lose the club because of the mound of debt her dad left behind.

“I’m glad there’s not too much pressure,” says one of new cowgirls, as they undergo a transformation from Chopin to country in a single day, as one song has it.

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Why do these classical musicians need to take this country gig? Hey, don’t go see this if you’re in the mood to be asking questions. By the end, not only will the out-of-towners be transformed and more joyful, but Jo will refind her singing voice and two waitresses named Mickey (Jackie Sanders) and Mo (Betsy Howie) will get their shot at the spotlight too. Thanks to the gals and a lost box of unfulfilled bar tabs, “Cowgirls” has more happy endings than a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie.

The book, written by Howie, who plays the shy waitress and bookkeeper Mo, is light as a feather, even with its lame peppering of feminism. Just as Jo wants to prove her daddy wrong for not letting ladies sing for all those years, Mary Lou has some payback in her heart for a music teacher who once told her it was too bad she was a woman. Whatever.

This leads to several authentic-sounding and pleasing country numbers about the power of women, with music and lyrics by Murfitt: the rousing “Don’t Look Down”; “Help Yourself,” which advises, “Get your butt back in the saddle”; and a sweet motherless-child ballad, “Time to Come Home,” sung poignantly by Coullet.

Other of Murfitt’s songs are more parodic of the country music pathos. I liked the one that began “Father gambled away our savings / Mother had to sell her hair.” Or this one: “Did you mean it when you kissed me tenderly / And when we made love did you know that it was me?”

Murfitt plays the part of the most repressed musician--even in casual clothes she looks like an attorney on a Connecticut weekend. She is very funny when asked if there is a difference between the violin and the fiddle. “There is!” she says firmly. Then, worried, to herself: “There must be.”

Soon enough she is fiddling, playing the mandolin and jumping in the air to yell, “I’m a cowgirl. Yip. Yip.”

Most adorable is Sanders as Mickey, the sexy, desperate-to-sing, banjo-playing waitress. Lee, charmingly played by Lori Fischer, is the perkiest cowgirl, but she worries what her new Kansas friends will think of her if they find out she’s a lesbian. Something to be thankful for: We never find out. The writers have the sense to spare us a warm acceptance scene. They have good over-all radar for steering a vehicle that is always on the brink of treacle.

Director Eleanor Reissa must also be credited for keeping this souffle afloat, although the final number should be more of a blow-out, both visually and musically. But we all have gotten the point long ago. The stuffy trio can relax and just have fun. It was never the music they needed to master to do this gig. After all, as one of them points out, “it’s just the same three chords over and over.” They needed to learn how to do a two-hand hip slap while stompin’ their feet and smiling and meaning it. And, by George, I think they got it.

* “Cowgirls,” Old Globe Theatre, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, San Diego, Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m. Sun., 7 p.m. Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 18. $20-$36. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

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Rhonda Coullet: Jo Carlson

Jackie Sanders: Mickey

Betsy Howie: Mo

Mary Ehlinger: Rita

Lori Fischer: Lee

Mary Murfitt: Mary Lou

An Old Globe Theatre production. Conceived by Mary Murfitt. Book by Betsy Howie. Music and lyrics by Mary Murfitt. Directed and choreographed by Eleanor Reissa. Sets James Noone. Costumes Catherine Zuber. Lights Ken Posner. Sound Jeff Ladman. Musical direction Pam Drews Phillips. Musical arranger Mary Ehlinger. Stage manager Peter Van Dyke.