Pump Boys & Dinettes first played in New York at the Chelsea West Side Arts Theatre in 1981. It eventually found its way to Broadway in Februrary of 1982, but it's hard to imagine the score has ever been sung with more heart and soul than I witnessed Sunday night at the Laurie Beechman Theatre.
The musical tells the story of four men who work at a gas station, and two women waitresses at the Double Cupp Diner, a dinette, located somewhere between Frog Level and Smyrna, North Carolina. It's a land where men outnumber women two-to-one, unless you're in Smyrna, where, according to Prudie Cupp (Abby Lee), the ratio is three-to-one, due to a history of inbreeding.
Prudie runs the highway-side diner with her sister, Rhetta Cupp (Julie Foldesi of Broadway's South Pacific, Little Women and The Full Monty) and together they serve up sweet potato pie, homemade beer, second cups of coffee on the house and enough brassy vocals to give this guy a smile for nearly the entire 90 minutes.
If you're looking for some good beer, good eats and a fun time on a Sunday or Monday night, the production of Pump Boys & Dinettes playing in the basement of the West Bank Cafe will fill you up. But prepare yourself for more than that. The Cupp ladies and the men who eat their food (Erik Hayden, Justin Hosek, Scott Pearson and Devon Goffman) manage to use their guitars, piano, bass, kitchen utensils, golden voices and sensitive hearts to find some powerful and unexpected moments in a few sweet and snappy country-rock tunes. Give the folks of Frog Level and Smyrna your evening and a ten dollar bill, and they'll give you the rare satisfaction that you're a little happier and lighter on your feet than you were when you first walked in and saddled up to the counter.
Pump Boys & Dinettes runs Monday, Aug. 22 and Sunday, Aug. 28 at 7 p.m. at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in the basement of the West Bank Cafe at 407 W. 42nd St. (at Ninth Avenue). More info on the production and the show's producer, Numero Uno Productions, is available on NYC ARTS.
