MPAs leads -- a ruggedly handsome Jeff Pierce as Curly and double-take beautiful Colleen Hawks as Laurey give this staging human qualities that make the show more than an exercise in engaging song and dance.
Pierces Curlyis amazingly persuasive in the bunkhouse encounter with the surly farm hand, Jud. Anyone who can inject an air of credibility to Pore Jud, which may be the strangest song in all of musical theatre, is doing something very right. Pierce nails it.
The key is his starting point, a totally spontaneous response to Juds lariat, which is hanging on the wall. This Curly genuinely admires the ropes qualities and its potential as a tool in the hands of an expert cowboy, then plays off Juds responses as he launches into sarcastic song. Its a grim-but-funny number that generates its own momentum.
In one rare turn of staging, Pierce and Hawks do their own dancing in the dream sequence that expresses Laureys affection for Curly and fear of Jud. The parts are commonly given over to pure dancers. Shes balletic, hes athletic and their movement together including some spectacular lifts is a grand fusion of grace, strength and musicality.
--Leo Stutzin
Modesto Bee |
