Theater: Parched

I 10 in the Shade, a musical remake of N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, is one of those shows where the players go through motions rather than emotions.

Set in Western prairie country some time in the early '30s, the action hinges on the efforts of a plain girl's father and brothers to find her a husband before she reaches the no-takers age. Lizzie (Inga Swenson) knows as much as any man, but she scorns what every woman is supposed to know—how to flutter, flatter, bewilder and bewitch.

A brash, breezy con man of a rainmaker (Robert Morton) appears on the scene. The clouds are recalcitrant, but the rainmaker opens the heavens for Lizzie and the gentle symbolic rain of romance quickens her.

As Lizzie, Inga Swenson plays what the contradictory script calls for, a kind of shrinking oak. Rainmaker Robert Horton lacks the magical potency to make an audience believe in belief, and Agnes De Mille's dances are tired shoeings from her too-familiar rodeography. Only the wistfully melodic score by Broadway newcomers Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones has what the show is parched for—heart.