Mosley Street Melodrama goes country with latest show
Starting this weekend, the folks at Mosley Street Melodrama are putting on their boots and sequined jackets for a tribute to country music.
“The Roy Pickett Country Music Hour Musical Comedy Revue” is the second act at Mosley, which co-owner and artistic director Monte Riegel Wheeler says was inspired by TV series from the likes of Porter Wagoner and Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters.
Wheeler said the show isn’t poking fun at but celebrating country music.
“As a child in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I really was in love with this kind of entertainment,” he said. “So in some ways it’s kind of a celebration of it, and it’s a little bit of a return to this older, almost vaudevillian-based entertainment.
“What we do here at Mosley is really an extension of that kind of entertainment for people — it’s a release, it’s a good time, it’s escapist, really silly jokes and really great music,” Wheeler added. “There’s something so fun about the aesthetic of old country that it’s great for our region and it’s really fun.”
Much of the show is country and bluegrass arrangements of favorite songs, he said.
“It’s part of our heritage as Midwesterners,” Wheeler said. “We do it super-lovingly, because it’s true for us that we enjoy this kind of thing.”
The cast — John Keckeisen, Shannon McMillan, Scott Noah, Kyle Vespestad, Andrew Walker and Madi White — is also in a similarly themed “Suburban Cowboy” in the first act.
A takeoff on the 1980 John Travolta movie “Urban Cowboy,” except set in Park City rather than Houston, “Suburban Cowboy” was produced in 2005, and the cast included Wheeler and Vespestad.
“We thought it would be really long ago in peoples’ memories and we could update it and play with it and with younger cast members playing the roles that we played,” Wheeler said.
Written by Carol Hughes, the script was unable to be located for a while — the laptop it was on was stolen — but was finally tracked down. Wheeler said it was changed only to update a few references that were topical at the time.
Among the changes is adjusting a Dolly Parton lookalike contest, where in 2005 an audience member was taken backstage and given the full Dolly accoutrement.
“We just can’t safely do that for the patrons and for the cast,” director Steve Hitchcock said. “We just kind of came up with a really fun solution that I won’t give away but will be a really fun treat for the audience.”
While continuing to stay open during most of the pandemic, Mosley is being very cautious in returning to normalcy – with Wheeler saying it might not fully return for 12-18 months.
“We have, to the letter, followed CDC guidelines, as a priority even over local authority decisions,” Wheeler said.
Parties in the audience are still separated, and there is no close interaction between the performers and audience.
“In pre-pandemic days, we would sit on peoples’ laps and be in their faces,” Wheeler said. “We will continue to avoid that sort of thing while involving them in many ways creatively, without the direct contact element as much as we possibly can.”
Audience participation, Hitchcock said, has always been a staple for Mosley Street.
“They’re still very much a character in the show with us, but we’ve figured a way to make it work while keeping the show safe,” he said. “It’s been one of our biggest creative challenges, but it’s been one of our biggest creative successes, too.”
“Suburban Cowboy” and “The Roy Pickett Country Music Hour Musical Comedy Revue”
When: May 28 to July 10; 6:15 p.m. dinner and 7:50 p.m. show Fridays-Saturdays; 10:30 a.m. brunch and noon show Sundays
Where: Mosley Street Melodrama, 234 N. Mosley St.
Tickets: $34 dinner and show, $24 show only, from mosleystreet.com or 316-263-0222