evening sout
Who gets the blues?
by Anthony Glassman
Jo has inherited her father's honky-tonk bar, famous for bringing country-western music to the masses in Rexford, Kansas. There's just one problem: If she can't bring the mortgage up to date in 24 hours, the bank will foreclose and fake her family legacy.
It shouldn't be a problem, really. She's booked the Cowgirl Trio to play, and the show should bring in enough money to keep the doors open.
If things were that simple, however, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati would have a very short musical on their hands.
"Cowgirls is a story about three classical musicians who are mistakenly booked into a country-western bar and have to learn to play in 24 hours," said lesbian composer, lyricist
'I'm not a straight woman in real life, but I play one on stage'
and musician Mary Murfitt. She also plays one of the Coghill Trio, the classical musicians, and wrote the original draft of the book.
The play features six women: the band, the bar owner and her two employees, and their differences are the basis for the play's humor, which has brought it critical acclaim throughout the country.
"It's automatically funny, clashing the two cultures and two musical styles," Murfitt said.
Murfitt, who took up the violin at age six and can now play 12 instruments ("six in public," she confided), came up with the idea and wrote the entire musical. She liked it so much, however, that she didn't want to ruin the concept by writing the book herself and risking it not being funny. A friend introduced her to Betsy Howie, who had a history in off-beat comedy and cabaret-style works, and Murfitt thought she might provide the perfect element to complete the piece.
"I had tried different writers," she said. "One heterosexual man had the women getting into fights with each other, and I didn't think it was working."
Howie was so pleased with the musical, she wrote a part for herself into it for the original production.
Murfitt, playing to her first strength, portrays the Coghill Trio's violinist, the one most resistant to trying a new genre of music.
"I'm not a straight woman in real life, but
I play one on stage," Murfitt laughed.
There is also a pianist, seven months pregnant and worried that this will be her last chance to pursue a musical career for 18 years, and a lesbian cellist into the latest New Age things, although she doesn't necessarily grasp the concepts behind the practices.
"They've all been friends for a long time," the writer/composer/actor explained. “Our tour has been a disaster. Once the audience didn't show up, there was a mix-up with the dates, and now this."
Jo has one day to teach the women how to play music completely different from what they normally work with, and that effort brings through the show's underlying message.
"If you try and believe, anything's possible," Murfitt said.
Like making the artistic director of a theater tread the play, for instance. That was how Murfitt first got Cowgirls noticed. A theater wanted to put on Murfitt's earlier musical, Oil City Symphony, and she said they could if they took a look at Cowgirls, "It was total blackmail, but it worked, she chuckled.
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Murfitt also believes that given the right combination of personalities, working in theater and carrying on relationships can work,
Mary Murfitt
as she is now proving with her girlfriend Catherine, who lives in Massachusetts. They've been seeing each other for about half a year, but Murfitt will be away for several weeks at a time for productions of Cowgirls.
"When you're a performer or a writer, you're happiest when you're working," she explained, "but when you're working. you`re gone."
People who are more emotionally needy cannot handle their partner being away like that, but Catherine believes that absence makes the heart grow fonder, to Murfitt's delight.
Cowgirls will play at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine Street, from May 1 through 19. Tickets and showtimes are available by calling 513-421-3555, or online at http://www.cincyetc.com.
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