'Urban Cowboy': Broadway Honky Tonk

NEW YORK, April 14 (UPI) -- A musical adaptation of the 1980 Paramount movie "Urban Cowboy" has brought Texas honky-tonk to Broadway along with a mechanical bull, line-dancing, and a lot of theatrical fun set to a boogie beat.

The $4.5 million production at the Broadhurst Theater had a poor advance ticket sale, probably because it lacked big- name actors in the lead roles, and almost succumbed to the recent Broadway musicians' strike. But it managed to survive when ticket sales improved despite the war in Iraq.

Maybe a rootin' tootin' show with nothing much on its mind but a predictable but touching love story is just what the public needs in these worrisome times. If you want a lift, "Urban Cowboy" can supply it with harmlessly vulgar blue-collar humor, country-and-western music, and some of most spirited dancing seen on Broadway this season.

Taking the roles made famous by John Travolta and Debra Winger in the popular movie are Matt Cavenaugh and Jenn Colella, making their Broadway debuts after considerable experience in theater outside the Big Apple. They may not be stars yet, but it ain't for the lack of tryin', and audiences are with them all the way.

Cavenaugh is still a bit callow for a lead role despite his well-buffed good looks and assertive vocalizing, but he is entirely winning as Bud, the farm-boy mechanic from a tank town in West Texas who takes himself to Houston to visit relatives and find a job. His first stop is a decadent dive called "Gilley's" where men are men and women give themselves to them without even an exchange of names in the era of pre-AIDS promiscuity.

Coella plays Sissy, whose hoydenish ways and wholesome beauty intrigues the inexperienced Bud. She makes an adorable ingénue, and her lilting soprano blends well with Cavenaugh's robust tenor in such musical numbers as "The Hard Way," "It Don't Get Better Than This," and "Lookin' For Love," the movie's hit song recycled for the stage show.

Bud and Sissy rush into marriage and a honeymoon home in a trailer park, but bliss is routed by jealousy and both go off with new partners. Sissy takes up with a beefy escaped convict, Wes (Marcus Chait), who hides out at Gilley's and operates the mechanical bull that throws most amateur cowpokes. Bud lets himself be seduced by a rich, spoiled oil heiress, Pam (Jodi Stevens).

A predictable plot brings Bud and Sissy together again at the final curtain but not before Bud's Uncle Bob dies, allowing a funeral scene right out of "Our Town," and Bud and Wes square off for a riding competition on the mechanical bull. Bud is the winner, of course, a victory celebrated by a drunken orgy of a dance that is like a parody of the hoe-down in "Oklahoma!"

Melinda Roy's production numbers for the show's dancing cast mixes Agnes de Mille style do-si-do-ing with Bob Fosse-esque gyrations and stances, a witch's brew that works beautifully and yanks the show back to life whenever it threatens to sink under the weight of its formulaic structure. Roy, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, is making her Broadway debut as a choreographer and is a talent to watch.

Director Lonny Price, best remembered for "Class Act" on Broadway several seasons ago, has drawn top-notch performances from the large supporting cast. The most notable are Leo Burmester as a sympathetic Uncle Bob, Sally Mayes as his upbeat wife, Aunt Corene, and Rozz Morehead as Gilley's ebullient hostess, Jesse, a latter day Texas Guinan.

The book is by Aaron Latham, whose 1978 article "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy" published in Esquire Magazine inspired the movie, in collaboration with the late producer-director Phillip Oesterman, whose dream it was to make the movie into a country-style "Cabaret" for Broadway. The music includes country-and-western favorites as well as new music by Jason Robert Brown, Bob Stillman, Jeff Blumencrantz, Ronnie Dunn and others.

Designer James Noone has provided realistic settings and projections that make easy changes of scene possible, and Natasha Katz has devised effective lighting. Ellis Tillman's costume designs are of the tank top-and-tight jeans variety that spelled ranch wear 25 years ago but is now dress-down chic sold for everyday wear across the nation and throughout the world.