The Cast Photo by Kevin Berne

Now, two years after the groundbreaking, first trans actor cast in a TV network sitcom, Shakina, sang a few songs in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's 2023 New Works Festival–songs about the 5 and Dime story–the company is presenting the world premiere of an electrifying, exuberant, and in the end, deeply emotional musical that adds heart and hope to Graczyk's original, quirky comedy. Lyricist and star Shakina is joined by bookwriter Ashley Robinson and composer Dan Gillespie Sells (who together recently opened their musical version of Brokeback Mountain in London's West End) for TheatreWorks' 54th season-ending Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical–a summertime must-see and deservedly to-be-sold-out-hit for Bay Area audiences.

The set design by Nina Ball is in itself well worth the price of the ticket as the stage of the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts has been transformed into an eye-popping journey down memory lane for anyone who grew up going to their local five and dime store (or as we in Paris, Tennessee used to say, "the 10-cents store"). Shelves, display cabinets, and hooks on the wall offer everything from towels to luggage to hats to sunglasses, toys, kitchen ware, and jars of multi-colored candy. And the star of the store is a soda fountain counter with swinging seats, a nearby bright red table and chairs, and of course, the Orange Crush soda machine with a fountain spraying its delicious, sugary waters inside its glass walls.

God-fearing widow Loretta (pronounced Lo-ree-ta) is the owner of the once-thriving, now mostly deserted store in this town that she swears is "so dry, catfish are carrying canteens." Judith Miller is a gem as the self-righteous but also hilarious and big-hearted Loretta, who is quick to call out the exaggerations of those around her, claiming "I know when someone's peeing on my boot and telling me it's raining."

Amid a radio's tinny gospel music, Loretta anxiously awaits the overdue arrival of her co-worker and friend, Mona, who has gone to Marfa for an annual James Dean memorial. After all, the many pictures of James Dean and the replica Reata that take up one corner of the store have been placed there by Mona, who was once selected to be an extra in the movie Giant. Her treasured fame is–or at least once was for a few brief months two decades ago– being the self-proclaimed "one chosen to bring the son of James Dean into the world," the local twenty-year-old Jimmy Dean who now works at the local Texaco.

As she plops into the store exhausted after her bus back from Marfa has broken down, Lauren Marcus' Mona treads a fine line between asthma-induced exhaustion and James-Dean-inspired exhilaration, between present-day life and the memories that haunt her of incidents and people long ago. With a voice full of country-music slides and crooning, she sings of her love of a film, its once-grand set, and its lost-in-tragedy star as well as her own fear: "Who will Mona be when ol' Reata's not around?"

In a store decorated in everything from Christmas lights, strung crepe paper, and decorations once meant for birthdays and Halloween, Mona and Loretta are ready for a party as one by one the would-be revelers arrive, each given a song to introduce herself and her unique personality to us. There's local Sissy, who sports mounds of blonde curls and a purposively short dress that shows off her famed breasts that certainly could give those of Dolly Parton a run for the money. With vibrating tonsils and a voice that booms as big as her personality, Stephanie Gibson is a hoot as the character (originally played by Cher) who has her sights on being a country singer as she sings, "I'll meet you at the Grand Ol' Opry stage door."

Even more outlandish in voice, swagger, and bejeweled elegance–all of a Lone Star state nature–is Hayley Lovgren's Stella Mae, an oil-rich classmate who sings, "Goddamn, I love Texas." With her, is the much meeker (at least initially) Edna Louise (Ashley Cowl), a Mexican American "Disciple of JD" about whom Stella Mae just cannot help but keep making ethnic jokes that make everyone else cringe.

Into the store also saunters a mysterious stranger whose Porsche is parked outside: a tall, redhead in dark glasses and designer leisure suit. While the others give her the eye and try their best to discover who she is and why she is there, somehow Joanne seems to know things they can't imagine why she does (like on the side remarking about Loretta's deceased husband, Earl, "The only time that man was in heaven was when he had a bottle in his hand"). When Shakina's Joanne eventually does expose her past connection with this group, her jaw-dropping revelation is announced in song by her luminously vibrant and fiercely full-voiced declaration of "I earned my survival."

With music that often sends toes tapping and bodies swaying, these initial stories are just the tip of what is to come as twists and turns lead to confessions and secrets spilling forth in numbers ranging from country, to rockabilly, to doo-wop with some gospel and Latin sounds sprinkled here and there. All the while, as grown women's memories of their past times–good and bad–as teenage girls pour out, Mona is haunted by visions of a boy they all once knew, who was shunned and physically abused by a town that could not accept his fem side. Director Giovanna Sardelli has brilliantly discovered ways for scenes to shift back and forth in real time between 1955 and 1975 as only Mona sees and interacts with the teen boy who was once a member of their J.D. Disciples group. Joe is a wonderfully cast Ellie van Amerongen, who brings arresting and achingly haunting vocals to this ghost-like role and to a second role of the 1975 son of Mona, Jimmy Dean.

Many choices the company's artistic director brings to her direction are major improvements from the 1982, Robert Altman directed movie, especially given the updated book of Ashley Robinson. Nina Ball's incredible set has its own surprises to reveal, leading to scenes not in the movie that add current relevance to the story, given the current administration's war on immigrants, DEI, and trans citizens. A bathroom scene between two of society's outcasts when they were young–Edna and Joanne–and a memory shared by Edna of own native language being once buried by her teachers are just a couple of the musical's moments that turn this period comedy into a reminder that our current world is not that much different seventy years later from rural, full-of-prejudice Texas of 1955.

Both of these scenes provide Ashley Cowl a chance to shine in ways the background character of Edna Louise never could in the original play or movie. In fact, she comes close to stealing the show with vocals that stir the soul and ring with richness as she intones Edna Louise's "Funeral for Spanish."

Adding to the production's excellence are costumes designed by Alina Bokovikova and wigs and hair designed by Y. Sharon Peng that describe as explicitly in their looks as does the script itself the personalities, the quirks, and both the heart and the humor of the characters we meet. From a squawking radio to an approaching rainstorm's promise of a drought's relief (and even more importantly, lyrics that are clearly discernible throughout), Cliff Caruthers' sound design delivers. The dinginess of the tired store and the air full of dust are just two of the accents that Kurt Landisman's inspired lighting design highlight. The twang and drawl of Texas draws its own laughs as each character owes much to the dialect coaching of Kimily Conkle. Finally, under the musical direction of Jacob Yates, Sells' score springs to resounding life through the two-guitar, bass, percussion, and keyboard mastery of the band of five.

In its reincarnation as a musical, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical achieves a sense of rebirth in this dying town full of suppressed memories and unspeakable secrets–a rebirth that brings the hope of forgiveness and redemption based on rediscovered understanding and love. A literal washing away of the dirty past occurs in a final scene when the entire cast upliftingly sings, "Angels surround you if you care to see 'em, we are all angels if we care to be 'em." In times too often dark and dreary–whether 1955, 1975, or 2025–TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's premiere of this new 5 and Dime musical by the team of Robinson, Sells, and Shakina provides us with a heartwarming, laugh-and-tear producing reminder that, even when surrounded by devils, we can all too be a bit more angelic to those who mean most to us.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical runs through July 13, 2025, at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View CA . For tickets and information, please visit theatreworks.org.