Metro Pulse/Backstage/Pump Boys and Dinettes

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What:
Pump Boys and Dinettes

When:
Through June 14

Where:
Clarence Brown Theatre

Cost:
Call 974-5161 for show times and ticket prices.

Pump Boys and Dinettes offer little in the way of sustenance but is a nice, sweet treat

by Paige M. Travis

Musicals are cheesy by nature. From the very start, you have to accept that when the moment is right and the mood strikes them, the characters are going to break into song. One minute they're talking like normal actors and then, bam, they're singing in rhyme and probably dancing across the stage. If your thinking is too literal, it's like they're possessed or mentally disturbed.

Some people can't handle the musical as a form of drama. Either they can't suspend their disbelief enough to accept the singing, or just don't want to, the concept being too ridiculous and improbable or just plain annoying to withstand.

Some musicals are better if you don't expect there to be a plot. Many musicals just don't have much of a plot structure, or only enough of a story to lead from one song to the next. Anything Goes, which I saw on Broadway with my family and, somehow, again in Asheville when my friend Bradley played the lead, is one such plot-free play. In fact, I hesitate to lend the name "play" to such productions. Pump Boys and Dinettes, being presented by the Clarence Brown Theatre, is another such production. It has a concept, characters and more songs than you can count on two hands, but leave the notion of its being a traditional play in the lobby.

Pump Boys is set on Highway 57 in an auto shop and diner in the rural South. The characters are the employees of the establishments: L.M., the shop owner (Guy Strobel); Jim and Eddie, the mechanics (Jason Edwards and Steve Rust); Jackson, the guy in charge of pumping gas (Barry Tarallo); and Prudie and Rhetta Cupp (Linda Edwards and Allison Briner), owners and operators of the Double Cupp Diner. These characters, all played by professional actors cast from other parts of the country, are as folksy as all get out, but in a charming, believable way. Edwards, who also directs the show, was raised in North Carolina, so he comes by his accent honestly.

What sets Pump Boys apart from other musicals is that all the actors play their own instruments. Imagine if the staff of Pep Boys decided to start a band and play while they were fixing your car. Yes, these guys don't get much done; "work but don't worry" is their philosophy. As for Prudie and Rhetta, when they're not pawning pies and flirting with the Pump Boys, they play percussion on a variety of kitchen tools: a whisk in a sauce pan, wooden spoons on pots and pans, a fork and a cheese grater. It's like a culinary version of Stomp.

Every cast member is a solid musician and singer, so the songs don't suffer from lack of talent. But they are hokey enough to induce convulsive eye-rolling. Take for instance, the song where Jim sings about his grandmother and her good cooking. He belts out "Mamaw," the song's title, Freddy Mercury-style. "There's only one fish that I wanna taste; the one with the mustache on its face," is a line in "Catfish."

With its highly detailed set of the auto shop and '50s style diner (created by UT graduate student Biff Edge), Pump Boys is reminiscent of a Dollywood show or the Dixie Stampede (there's even a song about Dolly Parton in the play). The show values spectacle over substance. But this production has so much heart—these players are clearly having a good time with each other and the audience (who hooted and hollered and were quick to jump to their feet for an encore)—that I felt like a grinch to begrudge its humor and sense of simple fun. Even when songs in musicals are enjoyable, I sometimes resent them for being so vacuous, so obviously created for sheer entertainment value.

Most musicals are, after all, pop music, geared toward catchiness, not depth. But by the end of Pump Boys, after the cast took its bow and began the encore medley, I found myself a bit swept up by its wholesome, foot-stomping energy. The first song, the one that entreats us to, "Meet the Pump Boys, meet the Dinettes," is still stuck in my head. Prudie and Rhetta sing a bluesy number about tips that is really clever, and one about needing a vacation that I can really relate to. And the song about wearing a T-shirt on the beach and getting a farmer's tan is hilarious.

Anyone who isn't a musical convert will find a soulmate in Eddie. Dressed as the rebel in a denim vest patched with motorcycle badges and wearing mirrored sunglasses, Eddie never speaks and casts his dry, blank looks on the audience and the rest of the cast to suggest that he wants no part of this display of cheesiness.

If you've seen some musicals in your time, you probably know what side of the fence you fall on, whether you can accept some singing and dancing into your personal theater repertoire. If you can't make the trip to Dollywood this weekend, the Double Cupp Diner is open for business.