E-Mail This Article to a Friend Best Western SpeakEasy tunes up for Johnny Guitar BY SALLY CRAGIN

One of Joan Crawford’s rare regrets was starring in Nicholas Ray’s overwrought 1954 Western, Johnny Guitar. Her character, pistol-packing saloon keeper Vienna, wants the railroad to come to town; she’s also struggling to reconcile with former beau Johnny. Given its notoriously wooden characters and fulsome dialogue and a bank-robbery subplot that was later thought to refer to the blacklisting hysteria, Johnny Guitar is sui generis. But Crawford never thought about it that deeply. "She was quoted remarking about the film that she had no idea what it was about and she should have had her head examined," comments writer Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, who adapted the movie into a 2003 Off Broadway hit with music by Martin Silvestri and music and lyrics by Joel Higgins. Next Friday, SpeakEasy Stage Company presents the Boston debut of that piece, Johnny Guitar: The Musical. Audience members will find sweet and subtle melodies, amusing variants on Western archetypes, and hysterical dialogue.

"It’s amazing to me that some of the lines that were written were so seriously done in the film," says artistic director Paul Daigneault, who helms the SpeakEasy show. "Vienna, who lives above the saloon, says, ‘Down there, I sell whiskey and cards, but all you buy up these stairs is a bullet in the head. Now which do you want?’ You just can’t believe these lines."

"It’s a goofy film to watch because everyone’s emotions are on their sleeves," Van Hoogstraten says. "I don’t think there’s one conversation between the men that’s not confrontational." Describing the original work as a "baroque, arch Western," he comments that the melodramatic dialogue begs to be sung. He and his writing partner, Higgins, were originally drawn to the project because of the title. But when they saw it in a movie house and "modern audiences burst out laughing, you had to respect that."

"The biggest challenge was the tone," he continues. "This is a ’50s musical about the 1880s, so we began to plumb the ’50s musically." Citing Frankie Laine and Marty Robbins as influences, composer/lyricist Higgins says his goal was "to enhance that arch sense, but not all the way to high camp." The opening number, "Johnny Guitar," puts the irony back in the barn: "He was a tall man," it begins, "and, as I hear it, all man."

In writing the part of Vienna, Van Hoogstraten and Higgins left room for the performer to utilize some of Crawford’s delicious mannerisms. Early in the rehearsal process, Kathy St. George found that putting on the gun and holster was her entrée into the persona. "It just felt glorious to be this surly saloon keeper," she laughs.

Mockery aside, the 1954 film has achieved cult status among a certain brand of cineaste (and the French, God love ’em). "When Sterling Hayden [Johnny Guitar in the film] was asked what it was about at some film festival in France, an indictment of blacklisting, or role reversals, he replied, ‘I have no idea what it’s about,’ " says Hoogstraten. "And Crawford’s influence was tremendous — she was very involved during the process to beef up Vienna’s role to be the driving force in the film. It really does reflect her sensibility of women in charge and makes the show a unique entity."

"I’ve been reading that everything in the film is Freudian imagery," says St. George. For example, women have their own phallic symbol: "a gun that protects their female honor." Certainly it’s a work in which, with one notable exception, the women wear pants. "In the movie, she looks great with tight pants and a gun holster," says St. George, "so I’m gonna work it!"

Johnny Guitar the Musical is presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in the South End, November 19 through December 18. Tickets are $20 to $40; call (617) 933-8600 or visit www.BostonTheatreScene.com