Sunday, June 14, 2009

Trash Talk From The Heart

Theatre Alliance brings back Del Shores' Southern comedy Sordid Lives
By Mary Martin Niepold
Leave it to Texas playwright Del Shores to skewer the hilarity of Southern customs (including denial of the sexual reality of some family members) and for the Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance to tap his series of comedy hits as part of its tried-and-true programming. Come Friday, Sordid Lives, one of Shores more successful trash-talking, heart-pulling comedies will return to the company's stage.

Sordid Lives was first presented at Theatre Alliance in 2006 and was such a hit that director Jamie Lawson decided it was time to stir up summer with a repeat run.

While the original Sordid Lives didn't fare fabulously with the critics when it debuted in 1996, it went on to capture 14 Drama League awards. By 2001, the film version, which starred Olivia Newton-John, Delta Burke and Beau Bridges, became a cult classic, especially among gay and independent audiences. The TV series last year was a cult hit as well.

For Lawson, Shores' material succeeds on several levels. One, Lawson personally loves it; two, he knows that Winston-Salem audiences love it; and three, the company has never misfired with mounting any of Shores's string of Southern romps. The company showed Daddy's Dyin', Who's Got the Will in 2007, Southern Baptist Sissies in 2008, and now the double offering of Sordid Lives in 2006 and this month.

Shores' only remaining work, The Trials and Tribulations of a
Trailer Trash Housewife, will be presented in April 2010.

"That means we will have done them all," Lawson said, "and then what will we do?"

Obviously, Shores knows how to make Southern audiences, in particular, laugh their hearts out, including at themselves.

In Sordid Lives, the storyline rests on shenanigans, none of which are that unfamiliar to Southerners. Basically, two sisters and an aunt are trying to make funeral arrangements for the recently deceased Peggy Ingram. Peggy is the mother to daughters, Latrelle and LaVonda, and son, Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram. Her much younger sister is Sissy Hickey.

Peggy, unfortunately, hit her head and bled to death after tripping over her lover's wooden legs in a motel room. Latrelle, the very proper of the two sisters, does not want to bury her mother in a mink stole in the summertime in Texas, and LaVonda remains the free spirit in the family. Meanwhile, their brother, Brother Boy, has been institutionalized for the past 23 years in a mental institution because he's convinced he's really Tammy Wynette.

We actually see "Brother Boy" rehearsing for his Tammy Wynette show in the institution, along with a series of three other vignettes that happen on the day before and day of Peggy's funeral.

The play is like a family tree of misfits and misfires covering three generations of relatives and friends. Some of their names are "Bubba," "Odell," "Noleta," "Doctor Evil" and "Bumper," which says a lot, and the week of the funeral just happens to be the week that Sissy had decided to quit smoking.

Most of us would admit that funerals somehow bring out the worst in some relatives. But when that fuse is set off in a Southern town where characters happen to include being gay, a cross-dresser, the town drunk and a deranged ex-girlfriend, then, fireworks ignite and skeletons start tumbling out of the closet. Making it all the more hilarious is the fact that these folks wouldn't know reality under any circumstances, let alone at a funeral.

Lawson said that this show is actually unlike any of Theatre Alliance's other shows. He said that he doesn't personally love comedies, per se, but that there's just something about Sordid Lives that he does love. The show has adult language and themes, but all ages are welcomed.

"This is a combination of mild bathroom humor and a sitcom -- but it has heart," Lawson said.

"The show is particularly Southern in that it's over the top, and characters are in situations that at first glance appear outrageous, but are actually rooted in a lot of truth.

The Southern part is the customs such as tons of food brought to the home on the occasion of death, the dialect and the costumes.

"It's just so funny to Southerners, because you see people or situations that are so familiar," Lawson said.

And while it is true that drama and literature revolve around major life events, a Shores play taps his talent for presenting those events with over-the-top imagination in very familiar settings.

Lawson likens the heart portrayed in the play to the feeling he gets after seeing a Disney movie. "What makes me like a Disney movie is that I can identify with the characters, whether it's a singing mermaid or a flying elephant. Most people root for an underdog, and this show has that.

"At the end of show," he said, "you come away feeling there's still hope and goodness lurking in the world."

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