Don’t you wish in these days of Santa Ana-whipped fires and dry foliage that you coul find someone, anyone, who for a mere $100 (maybe even $1000 given inflation) could promise you rain? While no one can promise rain this coming season, Glendale's A Noise Within can offer a measure of optimism in its revival of The Rainmaker.
N. Richard Nash’s 1954 The Rainmaker is all about hope and promise and how they, coupled with pragmatism, are what humans need to live a joyful life. In 1956 Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn starred in the movie. More recently, the Pasadena Playhouse hosted a production of the story re-made into a musical, 110 in the Shade.
The story takes place place at a small cattle ranch during the summer of 1954. HC Curry (Mitchell Edmonds) is the jovial patriarch of a motherless brood that includes the plain but sensible and book-smart Lizzie (Bridget Flanery), the serious, pragmatic Noah (Steve Weingartner), and the dim-witted but enthusiastic youngest child, Jimmy (Ross Hellwig).
Lizzie has just returned from a trip. She'd been sent away with new dresses to some cousins in hopes of finding a husband, but the plan failed miserably—she was too smart and too shy. The men instantly hit on another plan: get the deputy, File (Scott Roberts), to come to dinner.
File lives a friendless life, pretending to be a widower when everyone knows his wife left him for another man. He can’t accept the offers tendered by the Sheriff (Leonard Kelly-Young) of a puppy to give him a bit of unconditional love, and an invitation to dinner is even less welcome. Into all their lives comes a stranger with an obviously made-up name to go with his big lies and boasts: Starbuck (Bo Foxworth).
As Starbuck, Foxworth wears a flamboyant cowboy shirt—turquoise with brown appliqués. He’s not the tallest member of the cast, so he dominates by his smile and smooth bluster. The transformation in Flanery’s Lizzie, from a woman with a pinched white face and tightly pulled-back hair to a woman who smiles with a relaxed joy, is believable. One realizes that both Starbuck and HC are right: sometimes one only has to believe one is beautiful, and feel the hope of life’s possibilities, to be truly attractive.
Strongly cast, under the adept direction of Andrew J. Traister, this A Noise Within revival is emotionally satisfying, with high production values. During these dark economic days under the relentless California sun, we all probably need a dose of hope to weather whatever comes next.
The Rainmaker runs at A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale, until Dec. 6. (818) 240-0910.
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