Think red light district when you think “Jenny’s House of Joy” at Edge. Also, be warned.
Men, if your egos bruise easily, wear body armor. Women, if you get a kick out of the crazy things men do when their testosterone level is up, prepare to laugh yourselves silly.
That said, this is a solid Norm Foster comedy, one that probes and prompts the dynamics of five unique women working out their basic differences. It’s funny. It’s honest. It’s engaging.
It’s no great mystery why Jenny Starbuck’s House of Joy thrives in Baxter, Kansas, 1871. Baxter’s a one horse town situated in the middle of nowhere on the cattle trail to Kansas City. Cowboys driving cattle to market are forever coming in to town. You can be sure they are always thirsty for whiskey and starved for women. Jenny’s is the only Starbuck’s around. Supply and demand, it’s a law as inexorable as gravity’s.
Trouble is, one of Jenny’s ladies of the evening high-tailed it out of town, and Jenny’s regulars are wearing out.
Enter a stranger down on her luck, a real looker, who starts out, not so ready and not so willing but certainly able.
Talk about a hen house out of control. You can imagine the ruffled feathers and shifts in pecking order, let alone what hens would have to say if they could talk about the waiting line of randy roosters panting for personal attention.
Let’s face it. There’s nothing new in a women’s perspective of rough and ready cowboys in a houseful of whores. Of course, the gender jokes score for awhile. Used here, they are no exception and a little overworked but worth putting up with given the strength of the production and depth of the cast.
New facets start developing the moment Melanie Calderwood establishes her working girl character. Hers has a hard-edged exterior and softhearted interior. You can’t watch and not get involved.
The ditsy, bubbly, gullible but fundamentally good nature of a blonde who plays for pay may have been done a thousand times. But Amanda Ratchford Cherry makes it work this time. In the real world, Cherry would be a tragedy. Here, she’s a triumph.
Kayti Barnett’s new girl on the block wins you over, alienates you and leads you on. Barnett keeps you eating out of her hand.
Christine Mosere’s Jenny is the madam who’s seen it all and knows it all but with a background story that exposes her vulnerability. The way Mosere does it, the businesswoman whose business is pleasure transforms into as much a rounded-out human being as theater allows. No doubt about it, Mosere grounds the goings-on.
For pure, attention-getting drama, it’s hard to imagine a more hard-hitting scene than the one Janice Hastings provides in the role of a devoted, God-fearing and heartbroken wife. Facing a parlor full of painted ladies, Hastings points an accusing finger before opening a wound anyone — man or woman — can’t help but understand.
This isn’t the heaviest comedy you’ll ever encounter, nor the lightest. If you have no objection to the subject matter and a smattering of off-color but certainly not explicit language, you will leave with a few laughs under your belt. Mainly, you will have a satisfying experience of how relationships between women reconcile. I thought so.
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at entopinion@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.
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