From its first scene, “The Rainmaker” promises an ensemble acting performance several cuts above the norm for the Miners Alley Playhouse, a full-cylinder community theater in Golden that is second only to the Denver Center Theatre Company in stagings per year by a Colorado company.
It’s evident in the tension between rising young actors Jake Mechling and Jason Burnside as dueling, dustbowl brothers. And in how Pete Nelson wears the caring Texas patriarch he plays like a second skin. And in how the ever-more impressive Boni McIntyre plays the spinsterly sister these men are determined not to let dry up with the crops and cows that already have withered in this 1935 drought.
Directors Paige L. Larson and Rick Bernstein grab our attention, and it’s heightened when the boys try to pawn Lizzie on a deputy dog named File, played as an intriguing Sam Elliott caricature by Christian Mast.
But then enters Bill Starbuck, the title character who cons these desperate dupes into paying him $100 to bring them rain. And here’s where things get a little less bravura.
“The Rainmaker” is part “Music Man” (a salesman comes to con a small town but, voila, instead infuses the folks’ lives with hope), and part “Picnic” (a trashy 1950s small-town Kansas hormonal banquet).
“The Rainmaker” is N. Richard Nash’s 1954 weeper that later inspired a massive Tom Jones-penned Broadway musical called “110 in the Shade,” which became a modest hit in 1963 with a 37-person cast including Leslie Ann Warren as the trollop Snookie (in the play, she’s the unseen object of brother Jimmy’s affections). The musical returns to Broadway’s Studio 54 next April, this time featuring a black family and starring Audra McDonald as Lizzie.
Once thought a Cinderella tale set on the Ponderosa, “The Rainmaker” now feels like a throwback anyone living in 2006 should want to throw back on the scrap heap of history. With their livelihood going down a dry toilet, it’s wrenching to see these well-intentioned alpha males (all single!) so preoccupied with Lizzie avoiding the humiliation of unmarried life.
The always reliable Mechling does a slow burn as brother Noah in a contained, disciplined show of cantankerous isolation. Burnside is particularly winning as the more amiable (and girl-crazy) Jimmy. His is a true breakout performance.
And as the romantic novice who suddenly finds herself being courted by two men, McIntyre owns Act II. Her tender despair is so genuine, so palpable, she singularly keeps the stage clear of soap bubbles. She helps the play rise from hokey romance to a real rumination on whether hope is just a lie we tell ourselves to face the morning.
Kramer is an accomplished actor, but MAP directors have a tendency to leave their lead actors to their own devices, and not to their benefit. There’s little that feels honest about his Starbuck. There’s nothing remotely Harold Hill about him, so we are left wondering why this whole family would be seduced by his charms. The con simply doesn’t sell the con. Even the actor’s posture, which constantly conveys a slouched defeatism, belies the intent of the character. He needs to be big and athletic and charismatic – a lightning bolt for more than just rain. What we get instead is an ephemeral dreamer.
Still, there are plenty of performances that make this play worth seeing.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Rainmaker” | *** RATING
DRAMA|Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Ave., Golden|THROUGH JUNE 18|7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 15 minutes| $16-$18|303-935-3044; minersalley.com
