Take the bones of a “classic” musical melodrama, throw in some references to the local environs, and dress it up with some fine costumes and scenery, and you have the fixins for The Saga of Roaring Gulch—now on stage at The Great American Melodrama.
If you saddle up and head on down to Oceano—I mean the Old West (where else would “Roaring Gulch” be located?)—just beware that nuance, subtlety, and complex ideas are not on this menu.
Booing the villains (especially Toby Tropper’s convincingly conniving Bart Black) and cheering the good guys (especially Kelly Brown’s too-good-for-his-own-good town marshall Wyatt Winchester) is the order of the day.
Make no mistake, this is old-style melodrama, with the musical’s stock characters winking broadly at the audience.
They sing (Anjewel Lenoir’s flowery voice is perfect for schoolmarm Hilda Heartfelt), they crack wise (Joshua Kenebrew as gunslinger Stan Slade knows how to time an insult), and they slip and slide across the stage (Hunter Oehlschlaeger as town drunk Hoot Hill spends more time face down on the stage than standing upright on it).
Only saloon-keeper Hortense Hildebrand (a feisty Annabelle Oglesby) seems neutral in this set-’em-up and knock-’em down melee, until she isn’t.
The plot, such as it is, unfurls as Wyatt and Hilda begin a googly-eyed wooing, and Bart, Stan and their henchwoman Calantha Cade (a stout and strident Ava Lovelace) commence scheming to steal a gold mine. It picks up in the second act when, as Hoot officially informs us, “the plot thickens.”
This being a send-up of the Old West, that means a duel at, well, four paces (the dusty town’s Main Street—or the stage—being too short for more paces between the gunfighters), Lenoir’s dreamy transformation into a dance-hall dolly (you go, girl!), and an ever-present but unseen nag named Nellie (Wyatt’s beloved horse) who helps bring the bad guy to justice in the end—it’s a melodrama, remember, so no spoilers here.
Director John Keating has pulled every trick out of his magic melodrama bag in this one, with help from music director Jordan Richardson, who adapted the script by Jack Canon. Richardson plays an integral part underscoring the action onstage with his whimsical piano accompaniment.
The set design by Shubham Rajpal (and the transitions between scenes) is clever, as is the costume design by Barbara Abbott.
With characters straight out of central casting and a talented cast giving it their all, The Saga of Roaring Gulch is as close to the archetypical model melodrama as you are ever likely to see on the Central Coast.