Randy Quaid takes on rascal musical roleBy Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic
Legend has it Queen Elizabeth I couldn't get enough of Falstaff. So her loyal servant, William Shakespeare, answered the monarch's call for a play about "Falstaff in love" and whipped up the comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor."
Truth or fiction, the rotund rascal Sir John Falstaff has been an irrepressible stage figure since his debut as Prince Hal's wily mentor in "Henry IV, Part I."
Featured in three Shakespeare plays and the headliner of several operas, this rogue gets another go-round when Randy Quaid portrays him in the twangy Broadway-bound musical "Lone Star Love."
With a plot adapted from "Merry Wives of Windsor," the show opens a pre-Broadway stand at the 5th Avenue Theatre next week.
"Lone Star Love" transports Falstaff from a 16th-century London hamlet to a wild West Texas burg in 1865. It is the first Broadway musical for the Texas-bred Quaid, and his first Falstaff — here, a drawling con artist and would-be seducer of un-desperate housewives.
"I love Falstaff's arrogance," said Quaid, 56, who's recently been seen in the films "Brokeback Mountain" and "Goya's Ghosts."
"I also love his huge, outsized ego. He's a dynamo engine who comes into this little Texas town full of all these gullible people, and takes advantage of the situation."
Making Falstaff a rootin' tootin' letch out to fleece the yokels is a conceit that writer John L. Haber cooked up in the 1970s. He used it first for a non-musical Chapel Hill, N.C., staging of "Merry Wives of Windsor" starring the late Tommy Thompson, founder of the folksy Red Clay Ramblers band.
Then in 1988 Haber and the band created a new musical based on the same story at Houston's Alley Theatre.
"The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas" recast Falstaff "as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War who goes to Texas in search of his fortune, as the cattle boom is starting," explained Haber. "The version we did in Houston was heavily Shakespearean. But over the years the piece has become a less and less literal adaptation. The dialogue now is mostly colloquial American."
Retitled "Lone Star Love," the musical went on to runs in Cleveland and other cities, then had an Off Broadway engagement in 2004. Jay O. Sanders played Falstaff, and the Red Clay Ramblers provided foot-stompin' music composed by group member Jack Herrick.
No question the Ramblers have theater chops: They were the house band for Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" Off Broadway, and backed up Bill Irwin and David Shiner in "Fool Moon," a Tony-honored clown-fest that toured to the 5th Avenue.
The Ramblers' rootsy, bluegrass-influenced sound enticed Quaid (a Houston native) to appear in "Lone Star Love," which opens at New York's Belasco Theatre in December. "They sent me the score through my agent, and I just fell in love with it," said the actor, in his soft, native drawl.
"Jack Herrick is a genius. ... I could remember some songs the next day, which is a real test. And the script was very funny."
Haber has revised the book for the show extensively, with TV writer Robert Horn, since New York critics singled it out as the weakest element of "Lone Star Love."
"Merry Wives of Windsor" hasn't fared well critically either, since its late 15th-century premiere. Among Shakespeare scholars such as Harold Bloom, it's often written off as a broad, flimsy farce, unworthy of Falstaff himself.
Haber, however, remains a fan of the sitcom-like play, in which hubbies suspect their virtuous wives of cheating and Falstaff gets his comeuppance in a basket of soiled laundry.
Haber says "Lone Star Love," Texas grit and all, is an "homage to what I consider to be one of the first feminist comedies. It's centuries ahead of its time, with the wives in town empowering themselves, taking on the men and bringing harmony to their community. It's about the power of love, versus the love of power."
Under Randy Skinner's direction, Quaid claims he's adding sex appeal to Falstaff's buffoonery. "He is genuinely romantic. He thinks he's a better Romeo than he actually is. ... But he can also be a very elegant and eloquent pursuer of women."
Though better known for film roles, Quaid has also done some theater acting. In 1984 he co-starred opposite brother Dennis Quaid in Shepard's Cain-and-Abel drama, "True West," and more recently appeared in "God of Hell" (another Shepard work). But he's new to the high-wire act of Broadway musical comedy acting.
That doesn't seem to faze him.
"I'm working with a trainer at the gym trying to get into shape for this thing. I also worked with [pop vocalist] Tami Lynn to try and get into the head of a singer."
Quaid can also seek advice from such sage "Lone Star Love" co-stars as Tony Award nominees Robert Cuccioli (seen earlier at the 5th Avenue in "Jekyll & Hyde" and "A Little Night Music") and Dee Hoty ("The Will Rogers Follies").
But is Quaid — a physically imposing guy of nearly 6-foot-5 who is often cast as a brutish heavy — truly a song-and-dance fan? You betcha.
"I love musicals, and got to sing in the Disney movie, 'Home on the Range,' " he noted. "Recently, I saw 'Spring Awakening' on Broadway. I love 'Carousel,' 'Oklahoma,' 'Les Misérables,' all of them. I'm also a big opera fan."
Well, as Colonel Falstaff might say, "Yee-ha!"
