A "Merry Wives" of Texas tries to wrangle too much

You have to hand it to Randy Quaid. In "Lone Star Love" he's not shy about acting the lewd buffoon.

For this Broadway-aimed musical, noted film actor Quaid plays Colonel John Falstaff, a good-ol'-Texas-boy version of Shakespeare's randy Falstaff in the Elizabethan farce "The Merry Wives of Windsor."

During this coot's extended, botched seduction of two Old West housewives, Margaret Anne Page (Dee Hoty) and Agnes Ford (Lauren Kennedy), Quaid bares his bloated midriff. He also bumps, grinds and shakes his booty, with at least as much conviction as Britney Spears. He dives into a hamper of dirty laundry. And he croons leering tunes, including "Fat Man Jump," without much finesse but evident relish.

Quaid is well cast as a smarmy con man in heat. But he doesn't yet exude the loose, nimble assurance essential to the best stage clowning.

And the musical around him, which heads to Broadway after its 5th Avenue Theatre tryout here? It seems to be of two minds.

There's the amiable, cracker-barrel "Lone Star Love," with peppy down-home music from the delightful Red Clay Ramblers band, hoedown dances (devised by director-choreographer Randy Skinner) and funny spikes of deadpan, populist humor. (Biggest laugh: "Having a ranch in Texas in no way qualifies you to be a politician, George!")

But awkwardly sprinkled over this yard of folksy calico are the traces of another show; one that is slicker, more ambitious in Broadway terms and more of a star vehicle — but for which stars?

The whole shebang now lasts 2 hours, 45 minutes. And that's just too much love, Lone Star or not.

Is there fun to be extracted from this epic, which lifts a lot from Shakespeare's plot and sports a terrific barn of a set by Derek McLane and duds designed by Jane Greenwood?

Sure, pardner. "Lone Star Love," which debuted in 1988 at Houston's Alley Theatre, has been worked over aplenty as it has moved from regional theater, to Off Broadway, and now to its Broadway-tooled, gussied-up version by original author John L. Haber and his new collaborator Robert Horn.

But what's best about it may be its original droll, homespun charms, led by composer Jack Herrick's bushel-basket of charming bluegrass, classic country and rockabilly tunes, played onstage by Herrick and his fellow Ramblers.

Among them is "Prairie Moon," a gem of a song you could dance to, sweetly sung by Kara Lindsay, as Margaret's daughter, Anne, and Clarke Thorell as her lovably dense dream guy. ("Hello, I'm Fenton — a yodeling cowboy").

Thorell yodels well. And Drew McVety as Dr. Caius, the French town doc who also pursues Anne, cavorts and fiddles up a frenzy in his act-stealing novelty tune "A Fatal Dosage."

Ramona Keller's Miss Quickly is another scene-snatcher, perhaps the only sassy, yodeling, black woman gofer in 1870 East Texas.

But the above actors aren't the stars of "Lone Star Love" — though the show is perkiest when they shine.

Hoty and Kennedy — able singers and wisecrackers — have less memorable songs in the larger roles of crafty housewives out to teach the menfolk a lesson. Don Sharkey and Robert Cuccioli, as their respective husbands, George and Frank, don't draw the best hands in the show, either. Broadway stalwart Cuccioli is strapped with a dumb disguise in one lame comic ruse (not one of Shakespeare's); his love duet with Kennedy is the stridently pitched "Texas Wind."

Quaid has potentially better material at hand to work with.

Still, "Lone Star Love" has to choose an identity. Not that of a bloated Broadway vehicle, one hopes. But that of a leaner, sharper, friskier romp of unassuming charms, which doesn't try so hard to become what it isn't.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com