DEBBIE DOES DALLAS
At the Jane Street Theatre, 113 Jane St. Telecharge, (212) 239-6200.
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IN the 1979 porn flick “Debbie Does Dallas,” a bunch of young women do just about anything to raise the bus fare to Dallas to try out for the cheerleading squad.
The flippantly suggestive new musical “Debbie Does Dallas” at the Jane Street Theatre has essentially the same plot, minus the sex.
This is a novel approach: Remove what’s most characteristic of something and see what’s left.
Imagine the Yankees, for example, assembling at the stadium without playing baseball, or having the cast of “La Boheme” analyze rents in Paris but not sing.
If it sounds insane, it is. This sexless “Debbie Does Dallas” is one of the most witless and moronic displays imaginable – certainly the original wasn’t this dull.
The show, conceived by Susan L. Schwartz, composed by Andrew Sherman and adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt, tries at first, in dialogue and lyrics, to be a satirical put-down.
The cheerleaders and football jocks are painted as horny idiots, with Debbie a slight cut above the pack.
Debbie is played and sung by Sherie Rene Scott, whom we remember with affection and amusement from “Aida” and “The Last 5 Years,” but who drowns in vapid vulgarity.
The humor is painfully unfunny, the music and lyrics painfully uncatchy.
The cheerleaders’ sexual antics are either enacted in silhouette or performed in underwear. Later, the football jocks get in on the action, too. It’s all bottomlessly boring.