Review Roundup: THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS at Finger Lakes

Next up this summer at The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival (FLMTF) is The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The show runs tonight, August 2, through August 23 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Auburn, N.Y.'s Emerson Park. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is directed and choreographed by Parker Esse with Tony Neidenbach as Assistant Choreographer; Corinne Aquilina serves as musical director. The show will feature scenic design by Chad Healy, lighting design by Jose Santiago, costume design by Tiffany Howard, and sound design by Bobby Johnston.

The cast includes Sally Wilfert (Margaret in The Light in the Piazza at FLMTF; Broadway: Assassins, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, King David; National Tour: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) as Miss Mona Stangley and Ryan Andes (Broadway: Big Fish, Sweeney Todd) as Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd. Jamison Stern (Broadway: By Jeeves, How the Grinch Stole Christmas; National Tours: Little Shop of Horrors, Beauty and the Beast) plays Melvin P Thorpe, Neal Mayer (Broadway: Les Miserables; National Tours: Priscilla Queen of the Desert, 101 Dalmations) plays CJ Scruggs/Governor of Texas, Emily Drennan (Radio City Christmas Spectacular, New York Spectacular starring The Rockettes; International Tours: Mamma Mia!, VOCA PEOPLE) plays Doatsey Mae, Crystal Sha'nae plays Jewel, Siri Howard (Broadway: Les Miserables, The Sound of Music; National Tour: Les Miserables, Parade, The Sound of Music) plays Angel, Rachelle Rose Clark (National Tour: Anything Goes) plays Shy, Brad Rupp plays Senator Wingwoah/Rufus Poindexter, and Sergio Pasquariello plays Bandleader/Edsel Mackey.

The ensemble features: Annelise Baker, Aaron Burr, Eric Geibel, Crawford Horton, Alicia Newcom, Aimee Lane, Adam Mandala, Caleb Marshall, Megan McLaughlin, Eddie Olmo, Lizz Picini, Elle May Patterson, Anna Terese Stone, and Thomas Sutter.

Let's see what the critics have to say!

Syracuse.com (Len Fonte): Wilfert 's Miss Mona has a big voice and strikes a proper motherly tone with her scantily-clad gaggle of girls and, but never quite lets us into her emotional life. Her tentative relationship with Ed Earl, played by Andes with a Sam Elliot voice and laconic cowboy delivery, seems even more remote than the dialogue indicates. As much as we may like them separately, there's not a lot of fire between them.

AuburnPub.com (David Wilcox): The show bares its sexual side most in its songs. The hormonally crazed men of the Texas Aggies show a courageous amount of skin as they prepare to descend on the Chicken Ranch in "The Aggie Song," and the women there look as comfortable as can be flinging their limbs around the two-tiered stage in teddies of all colors. But the show's musical highlight might be "Twenty-Four Hours of Lovin'," in which Crystal Sha'nae's Jewel tears down the Chicken Ranch's country roof sensuously singing about all the ways she's going to spend her day off with her man.