The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas - New Wolsey Theatre

The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas

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GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN present The Live Art Community Musical

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Book by Larry L. King and Peter Masterson
Music and Lyrics by Carol Hall

GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN take a smash-hit musical and smash it!

This Live Art Community Musical charges headlong into a bare-knuckle fight with virtuosity, legitimacy and taboo. A ‘misfit’ cast skips its way through a toe-tappingly problematic landscape of stereotype - the kind we convince ourselves has been wiped clean off the map by now.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas sees brothel madam Miss Mona run out of town by a crusading do-gooder celebrity. What will her girls do? Will Mona and the Sheriff re-light their spark? Will the local football team’s annual orgy get busted and leave everyone with their pants down? Are GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN just making a pointless song and dance?

Stuffed with cameos and interventions, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN's version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas explores exertion, desire, cliché, the epic and will be unlike any musical you have ever seen.

Look out for the open call for your chance to be involved! No experience necessary. Information will be announced on getinthebackofthevan.com.

GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN is a performance company based in Essex and London making work at the crossroads between theatre, live art, cabaret and stand-up. They are particularly interested in humour, endurance, glory and the banal. The company is an Artsadmin Associate Artist and an associate company at both Colchester Arts Centre and Roehampton University.

A SPILL Commission, presented in partnership with the New Wolsey Theatre.

Supported by Arts Council England, with additional support from the National Theatre studio. Co-produced by Cambridge Junction, ICIA University of Bath, Colchester Arts Centre, Norwich Arts Centre and Roehampton University. With additional support from the National Theatre Studio, BAC, Live at LICA, Nuffield Theatre (Southampton), Queen Mary University of London.

By special arrangement with Samuel French Limited.

Reviews of The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas

What the press say


Riotously entertaining… A gender-bending Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and destruction of Holyroodhouse contributed to a challenging, questioning, pleasurable festival.

Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

What the public say

Took family to see this show last night (aged 14- 77) and we all loved it. Real feel good production with fantastic energy and lots of surprises. We all laughed a lot and enjoyed some extremely good performances from the talented amateur cast. More community musicals please if they can all be like this one!

Fiona

It was only two and a quater hours. The previous reviewer clearly has no perception of time, and therefore should not be trusted.

Richard

GETINTHEBACKOF THE VAN’s unique production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas can be summed up in two words – Musical Mayhem. It was little wonder that several people left the auditorium during the show. They had come expecting to see a musical that conformed to all the usual conventions. It was a shame that they did not appreciate this was an outrageous parody of all that musical theatre has to offer. From the outset, that is to say before the show started, the principal actors were stomping around the stage displaying an enthusiasm and energy that never stopped for a moment during the course of the evening’s two-plus hours of dance, song and action. Taking a well known plot as their vehicle, the company invoked the concept on which the musical theatre is based i.e. a sudden burst into song and spontaneous dance and its break with reality. However, they did not stop there, by introducing ‘amateurs’ as extras, miscasting and cross dressing this parody gave us all that pantomime and am-dram has to offer by way of entertainment. Vibrant, noisy and shocking when the cast mimicked the finale of Hair we were left stunned but more than happy to clap along with the final rousing number. ‘What was that all about?’ was the question on many lips as the audience stepped out into the night but it was a clever poke of fun at the musical as an art form albeit more akin to the genres of the Theatre of the Absurd and Theatre of the Ridiculous. I enjoyed it but mainly because I left my deaf-aids at home! Notwithstanding that, I envy the cast their energy and fortitude.

David

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