DIRTY ROTTEN GALVESTON, TX

"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" on tour...

An eight a.m. bus, a flight from St. Louis, MO to Dallas TX, plane change, a flight to Houston TX and then a forty minute bus ride to Galveston TX. We arrive at the hotel after 4 p.m ....bus call to the theatre, 6:45. We are tired and more than a little cranky.

I visit the tragic mall across the street looking for some food. I am stunned as I walk past a huge store that specializes in prom dresses. No, I correct myself, they specialize in hideous prom dresses. It's difficult to describe how horrifyingly bad and monstrously ugly thesedresses are. Try to picture all the colours of a baboon's ass dressed with sequins, frills and layers of tulle. But it gets better...As I am leaving the mall with my Subway salad (the only food in the mall that didn't scare me) I encounter a puffy dress in action. It's on a teenager. It's royal blue. It's fluffier than a bridal gown and dotted with rhinestones. Accompanying the dress are 8 or 10 young men in Navy dress uniforms. The South lives.

The drive to the theatre is a long one because we can't stay on the since hurricane Ike wiped out all the hotels. Our drive reveals that there is still much the has to be rebuilt, repaired and recovered. We are told that the theatre we're performing in had to undergo extensive repair after the hurricane and we are only the second musical to be there since it's reopening. If you visit their website you can see some photos of this beautiful little jewel of a theatre and a power point presentation which shows the mess they had to clean up. The basement dressing rooms were totally submerged and are still being repaired so the naked cement floor, raw wood door frames and holes in the wall lend a post-apocalyptic feel to the place.

The problem with the theatre is that it wasn't built to house a show like "Dirty Rotten...". The orchestra pit no longer lowers, thanks to Ike, so our drummer is blocking people's view and cannot be inside his sound-proof booth. The wing space is dangerously cramped. There is no actual fly system but, rather, ropes tied to pipes, weighted with sand bags and hauled through pulleys. Totally old school. The worst thing is the sight lines. Because of the long, narrow seating style of the house, virtually everything that goes on back stage is totally visible to fully a third of the audience. No entrance can be a surprise, any set pieces waiting in the wings are visible, the props carts are fully visible. We are used to being able to hide in the dark and feel very exposed, like the audience is seeing us in our underwear....which they may have during quick changes.

None of this seems to matter to the crowd. The show goes as it should and they are on their feet at the end. As we gather at our bus after the show, the Executive Director (I think) of the theatre makes a point of raving about the show and says to me, "Thank you for being a part of our healing." Hearing that made the hellish travel day, the exhaustion and the strange performance space all seem a little easier to take.