“Respect” is equal parts lecture and jukebox musical
Distinctive voices help Cherry Creek Theatre’s “Respect: A Musical Journey of Women” through its paces. The problem is the paces. ★★¼5
Written by an academic surveying the sociological messages of popular music in women’s lives, it gives more weight to the historic desperation of women craving male attention than to the life-saving tunes that kept women sane. Worse, it revels in pre-feminist values without parody while narrating in a pedantic tone.
Worse still, it is cute.
The Denver cast is capable, the all-female production team is admirable, the direction and choreography by Shannan Steele is lively.
Anna High can demolish a soulful anthem with the best of them; Sarah Rex is a dazzling comedic actor with a fine voice; Rachel Turner smiles and shimmies appealingly through
the performance; and Sharon Kay White has an infectious laugh and admirable emotional range. Musical director Traci Kern holds the whole thing together. Still, the cast deserves better from the disappointing script.
The history of women, as this slight jukebox musical tells it, is a woeful tale of females desperately wanting and never quite catching the males who will solve all their problems. White has the unenviable task of delivering a history lesson between song excerpts, introducing such concepts as Rosie the Riveter, the Equal Rights Amendment and Rosa Parks as if reading from a middle-school book report.
Yes, these standards (mostly written by men) are great songs. The delivery is pleasing. Toe-taping is unavoidable. Still, “Respect” feels like a lame lecture interrupted by song excerpts.
What would be the soundtrack of your life? That’s the question posed by playwright Dorothy Marcic. A batch of songs chart heartache from time immemorial — or at least from 1900’s “Bird in a Gilded Cage.”
As the theme progresses from woman as submissive victim of abuse in “My Man” to merely submissive in “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man,” “As Long As He Needs Me” and “Where the Boys Are,” the women laugh and occasionally roll their eyes. There is a distinct lack of irony here.
Women waiting for the phone to ring (“It Must Be Him”), women jilted (“Piece of My Heart”), women identifying with the ditzy sexpot images of Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe (Rex is hilarious on “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” and “Whatever Lola Wants”)— there’s not enough credible pushback to make the themes relevant to an audience in the age of #MeToo. Or even to an aware audience of 50 years ago.
The retrograde song list is salvaged by the inclusion of “I Am Woman,” “You Don’t Own Me” and “These Boots Are Made for Walkin” at the end. But by the time you get to “RESPECT,” the anti-feminist buildup has spilled into numbness. Joanne Ostrow (joniostrow@gmail.com) is a former television critic for The Denver Post.