The Stage

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Published Friday 21 October 2011 at 13:15 by Scott Matthewman

A huge painted US flag fills an entire wall to form the backdrop of the Union’s latest musical - oversized and rough around the edges, it’s an apt metaphor for this fitfully enjoyable revival.

Sarah Lark (Miss Mona) and James Parkes (Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd) in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas at the Union Theatre, London Photo: Tristram Kenton

It doesn’t pay to think about the sexual politics too deeply, when the scenario revolves around a brothel with pretensions of respectability in a town where the girls are only tolerated in one beauty salon, and even then only in the back of the shop. The existing conflict within the town is overlooked in favour of an external threat from a televangelist-cum-investigative reporter.

And it is Leon Craig’s Melvin P Thorpe who dominates. A tinsel-clad terror mix of Anne Robinson, Pat Robertson and a panto dame, it’s an appropriately over the top performance that errs just the right side of overbalancing the whole production.

As brothel owner Miss Mona, Sarah Lark demonstrates a fine singing voice and an appropriate warmth, demonstrating motherly concern towards her charges and a lovelorn yearning for James Parkes’ Sheriff. When sharing a stage with the full female ensemble, however, Miss Mona doesn’t always seem as authoritative and in control as she should.

The large cast demonstrate real warmth, and clearly revel in Richard Jones’ occasionally ambitious choreography. Nancy Sullivan’s ingenue Shy and Lindsay Scigliano’s dowdy cafe owner with aspirations, Doatsy Mae, provide standout performances from the barest bones of character.

Limited thought seems to have gone into the show’s set design, with the budget clearly going on Miss Mona’s costumes, and her girls’ lack of them. The resulting impression is of a show that, like the Chicken House brothel, has ideas of respectability beyond the reality.