“Tommy Lee Jones Goes to the Opera Alone” was a riff on celebrity done with life-size puppets. The musical “Sweet Tooth” told of an exacting aesthete who would not leave her home — nope, not even for an agonizing tooth ache — because she could not control the look of the world. “Jugged Rabbit Stew” featured an embittered and talented magician’s rabbit.
As for Square Product Theatre, Boulder’s edgiest troupe’s most recent show — “5 Lesbians Eating Quiche,” written by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood — was set in 1956 midst the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein.
For four weekends, the companies have joined forces to consider the tale of cross-dressing bank robber Peggy Jo Tallas, as only two of the area’s most creatively headstrong theater groups might in “Peggy Jo and the Desolate Nothing.” (May 30-June 21.)
The poetic, melancholy title came by way of Square Product’s Emily Harrison. “She thinks about America a lot (in this case the American Dream) and it just came to her…” Buntport’s Brian Colonna says. “I guess, she’s good like that.”
Trying to keep her daughter connected to her Lone Star State roots, Harrison’s mother gave her a subscription to “Texas Monthly,” an award-garnering mag.
In his 2005 article, “The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob,” Skip Hollandsworth recounts the story of Tallas, by most accounts a kind-hearted woman who took care of her ailing mother and also had a successful and wild ride as a bank robber.
“But Peggy Jo didn’t just rob a bank,” writes Hollandsworth. “According to the FBI, she was one of the most unusual bank robbers of her generation, a modern-day Bonnie without a Clyde who always worked alone…. She was also a master of disguise, her cross-dressing outfits so carefully designed that law enforcement officials, studying bank surveillance tapes, had no idea they were chasing a woman.”
If Hollandsworth’s byline rings a bell it might be because he also penned Texas Monthy’s “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas,” about a kindly mortician and the widow he befriended, then shot. The yarn became the basis for the Richard Linklater’s 2012 dramedy “Bernie,” starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine.
Harrison, who teaches theater at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was working toward her MFA at Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia when Tallas had her showdown with the FBI and police.
“I remembered the story from Texas Monthly and pitched it to Buntport, and they were interested.” says Harrison.
“Basically that magazine story is the primary source for the show,” says Colonna.
When it comes to collaboration, “Peggy Jo” isn’t Buntport’s or Square Product’s first rodeo.
“We do it all the time,” said Harrison, sitting in the bungalow that houses Buntport’s costumes and props.
Square Product’s regional premiere of Johnna Adams’ drama about a child’s suicide, “Gidion’s Knot,” was done in association with Goddess Here Productions.
Both Buntport musicals relied on the equally ambitious skills of lyricist/composer Adam Stone, whose own company, Screw Tooth, is now housed at Buntport’s space.
In addition to working with Stone, Buntport has established ties to the Denver Art Museum. They recently did “Captured in Film,” a delightfully playful one-off show done with the Augustana Arts that combined lush orchestration with performance and a silent movie comedy.
Tag-teaming a production keeps the company composed of Colorado College friends engaged, says Colonna. “For us it’s a way to keep the ensemble fresh and challenge yourself. You get another opinion. You get a different point of view.”
It will be intriguing to see what Buntport and Square Product make of Peggy Jo’s saga of wildness and sorrow. After all, even when productions have been slightly off the mark, the shows remains stubbornly vivid, engaged, and intellectually fearless.
-Lisa Kennedy, May 29, 2014, Denver Post