Las Vegas comedy musical gem ‘Idaho’ to be rooted at the Smith Center

By John Katsilometes

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Keith Thompson has never stayed a night in the Gem State.

“I’ve driven through it,” says the music director of “Jersey Boys” at Paris Las Vegas and the host of the monthly Composers Showcase at Smith Center. “But I have to say, I’ve not spent a night in Idaho.”

But Thompson’s imagination treats the land of Famous Potatoes as a second home. And over the years, he has teased audiences at the showcase with samples from his hilarious, searing satirical musical that would eventually be titled “Idaho: The Comedy Musical.”

The musical, originating in Las Vegas, makes its debut May 27-June 2, 2016, at Reynolds Hall in the Smith Center for the Performing Arts as part of the center’s 2015-16 Broadway Series. It will be the first showcase of a Las Vegas production ever inside Reynolds Hall, and it follows the enormously successful run of Teller’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” staged last year in a tent on the grass at neighboring Symphony Park.

“Not only am I super-excited about ‘Idaho,’ but I am super-excited about the Smith Center and Las Vegas becoming a place where shows get to be fully showcased in a way that might well lead to a Broadway run,” Smith Center President Myron Martin says. “Now, I don’t want to get too far ahead, because there is no guarantee of that happening, but I am excited about how great will it be for our audiences to see this production while it’s still being formed, while it’s still clay.”

As Martin indicates, the production of “Idaho” at Smith Center will not be a fully evolved Broadway-styled show (former “Phantom — The Las Vegas Spectacular” star Brent Barrett and ex-“Tarzan” and “Peepshow” cast member Niki Scalera sang from the show at Monday’s Broadway Series announcement). The music will be in place, and those onstage will wear the show’s costumes, but the expense of building the show in its full fruition was simply too high for a production of this scope.

“When Keith and Buddy and I started talking, we though of producing it fully for Broadway and kicking it off from Las Vegas, and that’s probably what we would have done if I’d had the budget,” Martin says. “That’s a lot of money, and it would be one thing if we were doing it specifically to send it to Broadway to recoup our investment in the show as a commercial product. Or, if we knew for a fact that we would get a theater in New York or the West End or tour the show on the road, but those things are never certain.”

Instead, what the audience at Reynolds Hall will see is more advanced than a reading and a step toward a full production.

“We’re giving ‘Idaho’ the kind of showcase it really deserves,” Martin says. “Simultaneously, we are giving audiences in Las Vegas something they’ve never seen before.”

Thompson is furnishing the music to the lyrics and book composed by his longtime friend, Buddy Sheffield, a comedy writer, producer and composer who was the lead writer during the most inspired days of “In Living Color.” Homey Claus and the “Men on Film” sketches were among Sheffield’s creations on the show. Thompson and he met while attending college at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Years later, Sheffield moved to Los Angeles and Thompson was staying there for about three months before moving to Las Vegas to help launch the musical “We Will Rock You” at Paris.

“This was all so serendipitous. While I was in L.A., Buddy told me he had an idea for a show,” Thompson says. “The idea was kind of Rodgers & Hammerstein as if done by Mel Brooks.”

Or the musical “Oklahoma” as if filtered through “The Book of Mormon,” though when “Idaho” was conceived, “Book” was years from the stage. But when “Book” became a Broadway and touring sensation, Thompson noticed that those who watched the show’s showcases “became far more receptive to what we were doing.”

The roots of “Idaho” are as deep as those of, well, a healthy tater. The show’s musical numbers date to the fall of 2005, when Thompson began staging readings at UNLV’s Paul Harris Theater and Black Box Theater. In April 2006, he began presenting the songs from the show at the debut of Composers Showcase at the since-closed Suede, a bar and restaurant a few paces from Double Down Saloon on Paradise Road. Vita Corimbi, today a member of the “Menopause The Musical” cast at Harrah’s, assumed the role of Ida Dunham, a gal of loose morals but tight harmonies who sang, “The Boys are Never Put Out.”

Since then, songs from “Idaho” have been sampled at the showcase, and, more prominently, at the New York Music Festival, where “Idaho” won the “Best of Fest” Audience Prize for the festival’s best-received show.

The numbers in the production include such titles as “Heck It’s a Helluva Day,” “Tater Wagon” and “Boise’s Jist As Noise As Kin Be!” Lyrically, the show is frequently ribald and consistently funny. Samples: “And the sheep are takin’ cover just in case all the gals are too quick.” And, “Idaho, Idaho, we dig in the dirt til our testicles hurt from swingin’ a hoe.” And, “... Although she don’t respect him, he don’t give a rodent’s rectum. … Ding dang dong we’re gonna have a weddin’ today!”

But there also are heartfelt moments as the show is not a one-note symphony of tater jokes. “We had to have more than just a joke-fest,” Thompson says. “We pulled apart the script to add depth to the characters and include numbers that will guide the audience through the show.”

One such number is “Pearlie’s Fate,” performed as Justice of the Peace Uncle Fate is knocked out after hitting his head on a fence post. His wife, God-fearing matriarch Aunt Pearlie, sings, “Give me one more summer evening when we sit and talk of nothing much at all ...”

There are a lot of those evenings in the great Gem State. If “Idaho” captures that spirit, it will have all of the appeal of the state’s famous foodstuff.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.