Review: Lonestar, A Popcorn Throwing Rock Country Musical by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs
Wow, guys, this was a mess.
Melodrama meets country rock band and invites beer drinkers to interrupt the whole thing at will with popcorn, catcalls, and even, on one particularly wild night, someone's shoe thrown from the audience.
Dr. Dave my retired college professor friend and I paid for the Wednesday night VIP seats, only there weren't any. We were kindly removed from the high table next to the stage, which turned out to be the location for those long-legged cowgirls, but there was still time to nab our front row seats. We did get our complimentary beer glasses with logo and the two beer tickets each, so we had little cause to complain on that account.
Let's look at a couple of the key elements.
Melodrama: a theatrical art form performed in small towns, church halls, saloons and theatres across the country, particularly but not exclusively in the 19th century. Typically, a simple story with a beleaguered, right-thinking young hero, a virginal heroine with heart of gold regularly threatened by a black-hearted villain with loss of her maidenhead, loss of the family farm, and loss of everything else of value. The playing style is broad. The characters are stereotypes. Frequently, the actors turn to address the audience in character, exaggerating emotions with a complicit wink. Everyone knows that Virtue Will Triumph.
Country Rock: Amplified, very loud guitar-based up-tempo music, featuring a full and active drum set and perhaps an amplified fiddle. Thrumming base guitar is a must. Words and lyrics appear to be optional, because you cannot hear them over the roar of the music, anyway.
Boiling it down a bit further, one could say that the actors in the drama were attempting to communicate a story, while the musicians and overridden singers were obscuring the story by raising a ruckus beyond words. The audience, for the most part beer drinkers in their 20s, had about the same attitude toward stage and music that they would have toward re-runs of the Flintstones up on the big screen at the local tavern. No respect. They did like the popcorn throwing. Some of them thought it was enormously witty to thrown the entire unopened bag at once. Other wits approached the stage to shout at the characters and pound them with clouds of fluffy kernels.
Droll.
And that was too bad, because Benjamin Wright -- author of story, words and music who was playing the nefarious (love that word!) Texas Ranger Rex B. Mason -- came up with a plausible plot for a melodrama, some interesting characters and a fine plot twist at the end. Beleaguered young hero Timothy (the properly anguished Brock England) was trying to live down a reputation as a lunch-money thief and by accident wound up kidnapping the vital young Beth Anne (the luscious Sara Berger, wrapped in tattoos). Timothy was just trying to steal her car in order to get out of Lonestar forever.
Then along came big bad Rex B. and his Gomer of a sidekick Wilson (Spencer Driggers), on the lookout for the fugitives. Rex ("That's Ranger Mason to you, buddy!") specializes in rescuing damsels in distress and taking his reward in carnal favors. Wright played the villain straight and calm, without the big gestures or grimaces typical of melodrama. He chose to ignore audience interjections (both their words and their popcorn), which just goaded the worst of them that much more. I was discomfited. And I was annoyed that when Ranger Rex B. Mason picked up the microphone to sing, I couldn't hear his self-justification because of the roar of the band.
A note in passing: before the show and at the intermission the sound system was playing classic Hank Williams music to set the atmosphere. Thanks to spare arrangements and an entirely different attitude to the lyrics, we could hear every syllable that ole Hank was singing.
Wright decorates the plot with some other largely superfluous but amusing characters. Dour barkeep Jack is Chris Huggins. Good ole boy Tyler the cheerful, friendly guitar player lout (Jonathan Terrell) and three sexy cowgirls provide commentary and trailer park trash atmosphere. Jen Brown, Michelle Keffer and Jennymarie Jemison are fine hussy eye candy and they're swift to chat up nicer patrons in the audience and to intimidate the less nice (after all, those are the classic functions of any bar girl).
I recall that at some point the Vestige Group characterized themselves as a theatre group that put on theatre for people who didn't go to the theatre. I dunno, guys, this one looked like a mission too far. The missionaries were getting ate up by the cannibals.
[P.S. Director Susie Gidseg comments that we happened to attend "on the rowdiest night of the run!"]
UPDATE: Review by Javier Sanchez at the Daily Texan online, November 12
UPDATE: Review by Dan Solomon at austinist.com, November 12
UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com/Austin, November 12
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Lonestar, A Popcorn Throwing Rock Country Musical
by Vestige Group ensemble
Vestige Group
2908 Furth Street
next to Spider House
Austin, TX, 78705
