“Less-than-Best Little Whorehouse”

Last night, fledgling SFS Productions rolled out The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas at the Plaza Las Vegas and, true to its subject matter, it’s a emotionless copulation — to borrow a Pauline Kael line, it’s a practiced hooker with cold hands and no thoughts of love. That’s the nice way of putting it. At $73-$84/ticket, paying customers ought to be outraged: Broadway prices for big-budget community theater. Or maybe “low-budget;” the dingy, skeletal set looks like it was knocked together on the cheap and not only are the instrumentals relegated to backing tracks, so are many of the choral parts. Displaying breathtaking stinginess, SFS doesn’t even supply theatergoers with programs, just flashes cast members’ names on a projection screen. And although several roles are double-cast, SLS doesn’t deign to inform you who’s performing which role on a given evening. Thrift, Horatio!

Whorehouse‘s virtues are easily summarized. Carol Hall‘s irresistible music and lyrics (which are presented near-intact) could survive thermonuclear war, and are the show’s strongest asset. The chorus girls are long, leggy and execute the demanding choreography with panache. John Ivanoff, as the ideologically slippery Governor, is the one principal who really seems to enjoy his role, making “The Sidestep” arguably the evening’s highlight. By far the finest singing voice is the enviably phrased baritone of Tournament of Kings monarch Ron Smith (right), as Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd, but he doesn’t appear until halfway through the truncated show and has only one solo. Jacquelyn Holland-Smith (below), late of Tease, Jubilee!, EFX and Mandalay Bay‘s Mamma Mia! troupe, is a hard-boiled Miss Mona, with more than enough vocal heft in a role that’s conceived for an actress who can sing a bit. (Her immobile, “hair helmet” wig deserves co-protagonist billing.) For ostensibly longtime bedmates, Ed Earl and Miss Mona seem scarcely to have met.

That’s because Betty Sullivan-Cleary‘s stultifying, minimally imaginative direction generates zilch chemistry between anyone onstage. She also feels it incumbent to periodically upstage her players with grimy-looking snippets of the Dolly Parton movie version, crude graphics and ESPN college-football footage (which doesn’t match the scripted play-by-play). Since the screens flank the stage to the far left and right, you have to choose between attending a play and watching TV. Also, for those down front, you may share my disconcerting experience: One sees the performers in front of you but hears their voices booming from loudspeakers behind you … that is when they’re not being drowned out by the backing tracks. (Do the words “sound check” mean anything anymore?)

The supporting players are mostly forgettable, although Quentin Walters has been misdirected to play crusading TV reporter Melvin P. Thorpe as a fussy old queen. The inspiration for the character, Marvin Zindler (left), was a vain, thunderous, macho blowhard, notorious for not letting his family see him in the mornings until his snowy toupée was in place. As for the troupe’s various cowpokes, only Lysander Abadia looks like he just got off a horse. The rest are stock chorus boys. Worst of all is the strolling, guitar-strumming narrator (either Ryan Bobbett or Roland August), who has been cast for his buttocks rather than his voice. Ladies, if buttless chaps are your fetish, your prayers have been answered.

Among those present for opening night was Riviera CEO Andy Choy, who seems to make a point of getting around and sussing out the competition. I hope he’s compiling a list of “dos” and “don’ts” for when the Versailles Theater is reopened. I dunno how Choy liked the show. Although my wife and I got in for free, I felt ripped off all the same.

Trivia question: Who were the authors’ dream choices for the roles of Miss Mona and Ed Earl Dodd in the original, 1978 Broadway production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas? The first correct answer snags you some LVA swag.

Shame on Arizona. Taking a thoroughly deplorable cue from Las Vegas, resorts in Arizona are jamming up their customers with — you guessed it — resort fees. The whopping $45.30 (inclusive of taxes) imposed by Phoenix timeshare Arizona Grand Resort is the most egregious levy, but most others are comparably outrageous. Unless you stay at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass & Resort or Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, prepare to be rogered. Arizona Grand Managing Director Richard Behr actually had the nerve to say, “I think people still realize that it’s a tremendous value.” Yes, because customers just love being sandbagged with hidden fees.

Are they serious? Management at Monte Carlo is going to have to bump the Jabbawockeez troupe as it revamps the former Lance Burton Theater into a new home for Blue Man Group. So where are the masked masters of stylized movement going to be performing, starting this weekend? Get this: In a tent in the parking lot. Yes, a tent, through September, the hottest part of the year. Are you f***ing kidding me? Somebody at MGM Resorts International must want to be rid of the Jabbawockeez something fierce and has devised this diabolical scheme as a means of driving ticket sales into the ground.