Originally, it had been a midseason replacement, but now the musical Lone Star Love will be replaced by Enter the Guardsman in the Globe Theatre's Sept. 2-Oct. 13 slot. The outdoor Lowell Davies Theatre, once to be filled with the bluegrass stylings of the Red Clay Ramblers, instead hears the tunes of Craig Bohmler, Marion Adler and Scott Wentworth (Gunmetal Blues).
In a released statement, Globe artistic director (and double 2001 Tony nominee) Jack O'Brien said Lone Star Love was not yet ready for production, but that the theatre would like to produce it in future. Also factoring into the equation may be the schedules of both the Red Clay Ramblers and the Lone Star Love producers Dodgers Theatricals. The Ramblers will be in San Francisco at least through Aug. 12 with a revival of Fool Moon, while the Dodgers, Tony winners for the current revival of 42nd Street, have their hands full with the Broadway transfer of Urinetown!, the upcoming production of Frank Wildhorn's Dracula (also in San Diego, albeit La Jolla Playhouse), a spring revival of Into the Woods and a musical version of Dirty Dancing.
Conceived and adapted by John L. Haber with music and lyrics by Tony winner and Rambler Jack Herrick (Fool Moon, Kudzu), Lone Star Love resets William Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor in post-Civil War Texas. There, ex-Confederate colonel John Falstaff and his merry men charm their way into the lives of two wealthy rancher's wives. In a romantic subplot, one of the rancher's daughters is being pursued by several suitors including a yodeling cowboy named Tex Fenton.
Set in Vienna at the turn of the century, Enter the Guardsman tests faithfulness and love with dashing charm. When a theatre's leading actor begins to feel that his marriage to the theatre's leading lady is losing its passion, he decides to offer his temperamental wife an irresistible propisition - love from a handsome guardsman mad for her - but played by himself, of course, in a ruse crafted by a playwright and the theatre's staff. Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar's classic romantic farce The Guardsman is the basis for Enter the Guardsman.
- By Christine Ehren
