JOHNNY GUITAR, THE MUSICAL, Grand Theatre, Salt Lake Community College, South City Campus, through Sept. 29, 957-3322; running time: two hours (one intermission)
Get yourself a hero, some horses, cowboy hats, a hangin', a holdup, some singin' hombres in sombreros, and toss in a saloon, a shootout for good measure, and you've got yourself the makin's of a good ol'-fashioned Western movie. Add campy acting, and now you've got an award-winning off-Broadway musical.
"Johnny Guitar" was off-Broadway's Best Musical of 2004. Loosely based on the 1954 cult movie of the same title, starring Joan Crawford, the comedic value of the theater version comes from taking a lighthearted look at the acting, the melodramatic romances and the typical rough-and-rumble stereotypes found in Westerns of the 1950s.
The Grand Theatre has strapped on its boots this month to bring the musical to Salt Lake City. The show is filled with pleasant doo-wop songs that scream old-style country-and-Southwestern-flavored Mexicali music — and that's just the song titles: "A Smoke and a Good Cup O' Coffee," "Rhapsody in Boots," "Old Santa Fe."
Although it's not bad, the theater's 2007-08 season opening 10-gallon hat falls about three or four gallons flat.
A large part of "Johnny Guitar" is set in a New Mexico saloon in the 1800s, owned by Vienna (Julie Nelson Blatter), a tough woman with a soft heart deep down. Her rival, Emma (Staci Turner), the local bank owner, would like nothing better than to see Vienna hang. But just when Vienna seems to be headed toward hard times, a stranger with a mysterious past named Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hanks) comes strolling into town.
Whether it was opening-night jitters or the disappointment of a small crowd, the biggest problem was that the campy element of the play wasn't brought out by the actors as much as it should have been.
Lines were delivered in a 1950s acting style, but many of the jokes were lost on the audience, because it was hard to tell if the actors were trying to be funny or serious.
For the female roles in particular, their grit needed to be grittier, their mean streaks meaner and their sass a touch sassier.
Blatter has a pretty but not overly powerful voice. Hanks does a good job of playing the iconic cowboy tough man in a tongue-in-cheek setting (think Clint Eastwood meets Elvis) and helped to personally elevate the play to a much stronger second act by setting the tone with the hilarious over-the-top chest-baring song "Tell Me A Lie." It was more of those over-the-top, less-stiff performances that were missing from Act 1.
The play has a strong supporting cast in Ryan Paskins, Eb Madson, Gary Nielson, Jake Miskimins, Darrin D. Doman and Gary Pimentel, many of whom play multiple roles and help provide some of the best laughs of the evening.
Sensitivity rating: family-friendly, despite some simulated use of guns.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com