Pure Country: The Stage Musical
Presented by Lyric Stage
Carpenter Hall at Irving Arts Center
June 9-17
www.irvingartscenter.com
www.purecountrythemusical.com
George Strait enjoyed the good fortune in 1992 of having a movie-star vehicle tailored to his well-earned reputation as a country singing legend and his image as a real-life Texas cowboy. If the producers intended to turn Strait into a Hollywood movie idol along the lines of Elvis Presley in the 1960s, Strait crossed them up and turned the movie, Pure Country, into a showcase that enhanced his standing as a country and western hitmaker.
Pure Country has remained popular over the years as a platform for its star and has also taken on a life of its own as a near-autobiographical reflection of the down-home values of its original screenwriter, Fort Worth- and Dallas-based Rex McGee.
McGee has been working since the early 2000s to turn Pure Country into a musical for the legitimate stage. The effort has enjoyed some breakthroughs in recent years, including a vividly staged presentation at Casa Mañana, and the addition of Broadway veteran Michael Skipper of Fort Worth as a producer. The initial payoff comes June 9, with a formal début at Lyric Stage in Irving. The strategy, Skipper says, is to bypass Broadway, where country-themed productions have historically not fared well (Oklahoma! and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas notwithstanding).
“We’re opening in Texas because we can count on friendly faces,” Skipper said. “The long-term proposal involves a touring production.”
Once the world premiere at Lyric Stage has run its course (through June 18), the plan is to get the show on the road and allow it to seek its own levels of popular acceptance. If Broadway eventually beckons, so be it.
Skipper became involved with Pure Country: The Musical in 2008 – attracted by McGee’s heartfelt story of a homecoming for a protagonist who has enjoyed all he can stand of the pop-country music scene and its commercialized manipulations. Warner Bros.’ big-screen production of Pure Country had long since proved it was possible to merge country music and moviemaking in a way that was dramatically fulfilling. Unlike many country-music stars who had found the movies an awkward fit, Strait emerged as a compelling presence onscreen. He resisted the long-term lure of Hollywood, however, and quickly resumed his life as a recording star and live-concert performer.
The stage-musical version of Pure Country features the contributions of composer Steve Dorff, lyricist John Bettis, director John de los Santos, and conductor Eugene Gwozdz. The bandleader-actor Harley Jay has been tapped for the leading role; his Facebook page prominently features the Pure Country logo.
The greater appeal of Pure Country surely lies with Rex McGee and the intense soul-searching he poured into both the screenplay and its stage adaptation, a process that began during 1991-1992 with an urge to return home to Texas after a long and often frustrating stint as a Hollywood screenwriter.
In the end, Pure Country emerged as a cry from the heart of a country boy who had sold out to uptown interests but was determined to find his way back to a simpler life.
When originally engaged to craft a movie-star picture for George Strait, McGee says, he wondered: “What on earth am I going to write about?” McGee soon realized that the story could and should be that of his own quest to return home from a 20-year stretch laboring in the rigid Hollywood system.
“Living in Cleburne was not the plan,” McGee has explained, “but Fort Worth – this area, this setting where I was born and raised – just keeps calling me back. It seems crazy for a Hollywood writer to be allowed to live in Cleburne and keep writing for the movies, but my coming home [shortly before the original Pure Country assignment] was just exactly what I’d been needing.”
He said the idea for a stage musical took root “the first time I saw the movie … and realized what had necessarily been sacrificed from the story in order to accommodate the songs, along with moments of real writing that had been removed because George Strait couldn’t enact them to suit [director Christopher Cain]. But there’s enough resonance still there for it to work okay.”
Pure Country focuses primarily on the frustrations McGee suffered as a Hollywood screenwriter and story analyst. At the same time, a feeling of being adrift caused by the deaths of his parents and a beloved aunt was eased by the inheritance of a century-old house in Cleburne. McGee came home to stay in 1991.
“I had to get back to Texas in order to get my own head back, my own heart,” McGee adds. “I just happened to have an assignment to write a screenplay for George Strait, and the job coincided with my need to get back to where I came from. My middle-age crisis became a screenplay, you might say…”
“Pure Country, after all, is the tale of a country boy who has found celebrity more trouble than it is worth to him, a guy at the end of his rope. [The leading character] can’t feel his own music any longer. So he goes back home and gets his soul back. It’s Goethe’s Faust, basically – the ultimate midlife crisis, I imagine.
“Forcing creativity will shut it down entirely – just like I couldn’t have written Pure Country if I’d stayed put in Los Angeles and tried to force the story. It required me to come back home, kick back and re-connect, and let the story come to me.”
Deborah Connor is co-owner of DRC Media LLC.