‘Whorehouse’ A Rip-Roaring Crowd Pleaser

“The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” Thursday, Aug. 7, Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre

This is the best little piece of theater the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre has come up with all season.

This raunchy story of a Texas bawdyhouse is loaded with funny performances and show-stopping numbers. At the end of “The Aggie Song,” an athletically choreographed number featuring the hormone-crazed members of the Texas A&M Aggies, I didn’t think the audience would ever stop applauding. I figured these football players were going to have to hold their final pose until they fainted dead away.

All of this applause was richly deserved. If you want to study how skilled direction can transform a merely amusing show into a rip-roaring crowd pleaser, watch what director Jason Fortner does with this show. There’s nothing flashy. There are no gimmicks. But his direction is sharply focused. He understands the point of every scene, whether comic or dramatic, and he makes sure that every performance and every gesture contributes to making that point. The result is: We care about the people and the story.

The story itself is more Molly Ivins than Rodgers and Hammerstein. Based on a true story, it’s about the Chicken Ranch, a Texas institution for decades. However, a self-righteous TV crusader mounts a campaign to shut it down. The show’s sympathies are clearly with the skimpily clad girls at the ranch, yet in the end, the forces of good, unfortunately, prevail.

This show is helped by great casting in the two lead roles. I’ve been wondering when someone would get smart and cast Thara Cooper in the lead of a big musical, and it turns out that the role of Mona, the madam, is perfect for her. With a big wig of curly red hair, she looks for all the world like a country-western queen, like a young and even-better-looking Reba McEntire. She has fine comic timing, and her Texas-accented voice is rich and seductive. She extracted every ounce of meaning and emotion from her showcase song, “Bus From Amarillo.” She is, quite simply, of national caliber.

Todd Hermanson is a hilarious bundle of pent-up anxiety and anger as the sheriff, Ed Earl Dodd. He can pitch a fit that would scare a wildcat, shouting Texas-tinged curses and flailing the air with his hat.

The supporting performances are, once again, outstanding. Bill Marlowe is wonderfully self-righteous as the crusader, Melvin P. Thorpe. He plays him like a Texas-accented Oliver Hardy. As good as Marlowe was in this role, I would have loved to see him as the Governor, just to see what he would do with the song, “The Sidestep,” not that Bill Weis wasn’t funny in that role.

However, I did miss that characteristic bit of business with the sideways hat in “The Sidestep” (remember Charles Durning in the movie?) Either it’s too hard to do or Fortner decided it was a cliche.

Bobbi Kotula was terrific once again, this time as the cafe waitress Doatsey Mae. Her song “Doatsey Mae,” about her regrets at her drab life, was one of the show’s emotional high points.

The “girls” were all quite, well, talented, and not only because of their Victoria’s Secret outfits. Their song and dance numbers were a hoot, and each of them managed to create a distinct character.

And then there was the ensemble of male dancers. The ovation they got for “The Aggie Song’ was richly deserved, if for no other reason than this: Tap-dancing in cowboy boots can’t be easy. , DataTimes MEMO: “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” continues today and Thursday through Saturday next week at the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre; call (800) 4-CDA-TIX for tickets.