June 15-21, 2006

Arts : Theater

Bad Reception

by Mark Cofta

Hedgerow Theatre switches to summer mode with Radio Gals, the area premiere of a little musical set in 1927 Arkansas that's done very well around the country. A little Prairie Home Companion, a little Hee Haw, Radio Gals is a light, silly show that receives a frothy staging.

Creators Mark Craver and Mark Hardwick worked from an intriguing historical footnote about a Los Angeles evangelist who ran her own radio station and was investigated for "wavejumping," switching broadcast wavelengths to find clear airspace. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover sent an inspector, and the evangelist supposedly eloped with him—on his motorcycle!

Radio Gals doesn't measure up to its inspiration, but also doesn't try. Hazel Hunt of Cedar Ridge, Ark., receives a Western Electric 500-watt transmitter and becomes a "gypsy of the ether" from her parlor, supported by her "Hazelnuts," locals who contribute songs, news and gossip. Government flunky O.B. Abbott arrives to shut them down, but joins the band instead.

Susan Wefel plays Hunt in high gear, conducting her Nuts—vocalists Marilien Mogendorff and Gabrielle Enriquez, music director Helen Clark on piano, versatile instrumentalist Pam Monaco and Daniel Frost (in hideous drag) on drums—and trying to keep blowsy small-town diva Gladys Fritts, played by Micki Sharpe, on a short leash. All of their toe-tapping music, sort of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? minus meaning and artistry, is pleasantly forgettable. The cast enthusiastically performs the finale—production numbers set in Egypt(!) and Hawaii (!!)—and sweetly harmonizes plugs for Hazel's "Horehound Compound," an all-purpose elixir of "secret herbs and jungle juices" smelling suspiciously of gin.

Newton Buchanon as Abbott proves most able-voiced, boosting Act Two while fending off Gladys' amorous attentions, though he's no gentleman (which, he proclaims, "is one who knows how to play the accordion—but won't"). The cast also employs kazoos, fiddle, clarinet, tambourines, bongos and even banging on a frying pan in a giddy cacophony.

Director Penelope Reed keeps all of this corn-pone nonsense chirping so briskly that only dour critics would wonder why a black government official shows up in the 1927 deep South and is pursued by a white woman, why Hazel doesn't need microphone and telephone wires and why radio performers use choreography (by Sharpe) and props.

For serious consideration of radio's fascinating early days, seek out John Olive's rarely revived The Voice of the Prairie. For some good-natured hootin' and hollerin', take in Radio Gals.

RADIO GALS Through July 2, The Hedgerow Theatre, 64 Rose Valley Rd., Media, 610-565-4211, www.hedgerowtheatre.org