‘Calamity Jane’ comes to Desert Star Playhouse
“Calamity Jane: Cowgirls Just Wanna Have Fun" is playing through August 23 at the Desert Star Playhouse in Murray.
“Calamity Jane: Cowgirls Just Wanna Have Fun" is playing through August 23 at the Desert Star Playhouse in Murray.
Desert Star Playhouse is saddling up and slapping leather with their summertime western, “Calamity Jane: Cowgirls Just Wanna Have Fun.” The musical comedy starring the famed, gun-toting Calamity Jane and her rumored significant other, Wild Bill Hickok, opened last week in Murray and will gallop on through August 23. Bigger-than-life westerns are a summertime tradition at Desert Star, and “Calamity” director Scott Holman said the Wild West done Desert style makes for big laughs.
“The characters in westerns lend themselves to great comedy,” Holman said. “I think most people really believe the Wild West that they see in movies and television where it seems at any moment a person might get shot. At Desert Star that idea gets blown up and exaggerated dramatically, but mostly, for us, comedically.”
Written by Peter Van Slyke, “Calamity” first rode onto the Desert Star stage some twenty years ago. It continues the playhouse’s 2014 season all shined up for a second outing. “We’ve updated it so it’s all current and fresh and fun,” Holman said.
The updating included a few new tunes done, of course, in Desert Star’s signature parody style. “It’s still a traditional western sound — we’re not going to depart completely from country music,” Holman said, “but there’s plenty of funk and stuff like that as well.”
“Calamity” lassoes real-life characters Martha Jane Cannary — better known as Calamity Jane — and James Butler Hickok, aka “Wild Bill,” and throws them together in Deadwood, S.D., where Calamity cooled her heels for a number of years.
“Calamity and Bill Hickok had some kind of a relationship down through the years, and there was a lot of rough and tumble action that they were both involved in, in the Wild West,” Holman said. “Our show is just a takeoff on that.”
In Desert Star’s melodrama the town of Deadwood is in danger of falling into the greedy hands of the villainous, mustache-twirling Diamond Jack Butler. Calamity, a plucky Pony Express Rider, is determined to save the town and Paddy O’Leary’s gold mine — the last to escape Diamond Jack’s gold-grubbing hands — but insists it’s a one-woman job. Enters dashing gambler Wild Bill, who woos the independent-minded Calamity and has to rustle up the means to save her and the town when she’s captured by the dastardly Diamond Jack.
Dan Larrinaga, who plays the show’s villain — touted as the “nastiest man in the west” — said being bad is just plain fun.
“I prefer a bad guy over a good guy, because with the bad guy, all bets are off,” he said. “He can be completely ridiculous or sophisticated or anything in between, because hey, you’re a bad guy. This is another delightful, deliciously evil role.”
And Larrinaga says when it comes to westerns — which Desert Star has a particular knack for — well, what’s not to love?
“You get to wear guns and a holster and put on the hat,” Larrinaga said. “That late 1800s, turn of the century feel — you’ve got to love it.”
CALAMITY JANE: COWGIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
Where: Desert Star Playhouse; 4861 South State Street, Murray
When: Mondays-Saturdays through August 23rd.
Tickets: Adults/$18.95, Children/$10.95 (11 and under)
Info: desertstarplayhouse.com or (801) 266-2600