Debbie Does Dallas - The Musical, adapted from the film by Erica Schmidt, music by Andrew Sherman. Three Amigos Productions at Canberra Theatre Friday November 19.
"Life can give you more than to go where you thought you need to go." Small-town cheerleader Debbie wants to be a Dallas Cowgirl. To raise the funds to get to Dallas, she discovers that working for minimum wages of $2.90 per hour does not compare with selling her boss a look at her breasts for $10, and a suck for $20. She has only two weeks, with school and cheerleading to fit in as well, so when Mr Greenfelt dresses her in the Dallas Cowgirl costume and himself in the Cowboy football uniform, and offers to pay her way, how can she refuse?
She wonders if she looks different afterwards, but off she goes, leaving the rest of the local boys and girls behind, to discover what more life can give her.
All this happens, including all sorts of simulated sex among the boys and girls on the way, at a terrifyingly cheerful pace, presumably appropriate for American cheerleaders. The all singing, all dancing cast are entirely up to the mark. Visuals, sound and lights are very well designed and just about everything worked, even though for only one performance in Canberra.
If the original, apparently purely pornographic film was made as a simple celebration of the joys of sex, then this musical version must be at least a light hearted semi-satire. It reminded me of the ancient Greek Lysistrata, where the women tease the men but won't let them have sex until they stop the war. Here we saw only one banana, used to represent a blow job and then regurgitated, and one over-long fabricated penis - nothing to compare with old Aristophanes. All good for a laugh, but rather tame pornographically speaking.
But I was surprised that adult women in the audience were cheering Debbie on in her purely commercial enterprise. I thought we lived today in a new world of family values and traditional morality. Maybe there are a lot more Debbies doing Dallas in Canberra today than I have come across. Or maybe they haven't really thought about the exploitation of women by men - an issue completely ignored in this musical representation of life giving you more than you dreamed of.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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