Paragon Theatre has gone soft.
Paragon got to be one of Denver’s rising theater companies by mixing the absurdism of “The Caretaker” with brutal contemporary comedies like “This Is How It Goes” and uncompromising classics like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“Bus Stop” is no “Virginia Woolf.”
“Bus Stop” is . . . well, “Bus Stop.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Paragon delivers a staging every bit as capable as its audiences have come to expect. But why is the bus even stopping here? You expect to see “Bus Stop” at community theaters. Why is William Inge’s dusty old chestnut of any interest to a company that’s clearly up to much greater artistic challenges?
The only possible answers: Sentiment. Nostalgia. Box office. Older audiences still carry a fondness for this 1955 story about a group of Denver-bound bus passengers stranded overnight at a Kansas diner by a blizzard.
It’s a crowd-pleaser, no doubt, but what is it this crowd is nostalgic for? These highway refugees are steeped in loneliness, drunkenness or ignorance. The play recalls a terrible time for women. There are three here: a restless older woman abandoned by her husband; a hillbilly chanteuse on the run from a cave-man cowboy; and a naive teen waitress who’s being unknowingly pursued by an old perv.
Ah, good times, the ’50s.
“Bus Stop” was fine for its time, but no one remembers the play. And they only remember the film because Marilyn Monroe gets all scanty and sings “That Old Black Magic.”
The play is a plotless character study that unfolds slowly and inevitability. Gruff rodeo star Bo (John Jurcheck) and his longing sidekick Virgil (Jarrod Holbrook) have kidnapped showgirl Cherie (Barbra Andrews), whom Bo is intent on marrying against her will. Gerald Lyman (Jim Hunt) is a creepy former college professor with an oddly British accent and a leering eye that’s focused on guileless teen waitress Elma Duckworth (Malorie Stroud).
There’s dark terrain to mine within these lost souls here, and we get fleeting moments of real power and sadness: Virgil ceding his place at Bo’s side to a woman; Lyman surrendering to a horrible malaise of drunken remorse; the compromise that drips out of straight- talking diner owner Grace’s mouth with every line (Martha Harmon Pardee).
But all eyes, of course, are on Monroe’s sexy stand-in. Especially when Andrews strips down and performs that hot, signature number. But director Warren Sherrill keeps the emotional stakes surprisingly light when it comes to Bo’s criminal pursuit of Cherie.
Andrews succeeds in creating a complex and contradictory simpleton. She’s a whimsical 19-year-old from the Ozarks who one moment plays the doe-eyed victim perfectly; the next she has you thinking she’s perhaps calculated this abduction from the start. It’s a portrayal utterly free from Monroe’s tether.
But sometimes the words coming out of Bo’s mouth are so dumb it turns into a borderline Jethro Clampett parody. You wonder how poor Jurcheck can say lines like, “I stole horses instead of women — because you can sell horses!” without cracking up.
His interplay with Cherie yields lots of sitcom laughs, but often for the wrong reasons, and at the expense of real emotional payoff. While one seems to be playing it for real, the other seems to be playing it for the audience.
This is also a hard play to stage just because so much of it involves waiting around. And the production team doesn’t do much to reinforce the idea that there’s a blizzard with 90-mph winds outside.
All in all, though, it’s an honest stab at a story that maybe should have been left back in 1955.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Bus Stop” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Presented by Paragon Theatre at the Crossroads Theatre, 2590 Washington St. Directed by Warren Sherrill. Starring Barbra Andrews and John Jurcheck. Through June 6. 2 hours, 10 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. $17-$19 (Two-for-one Thursdays). 303-300-2210 or
