Theatre Alliance presents 'Sordid Lives' - again

Posted: Saturday, November 24, 2012 11:14 pm
Lynn Felder/Special Correspondent

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the closet, Mama Peggy goes and ships you off to the loony bin to get you “dehomosexualized.” But that’s OK. She gets the ultimate comeuppance when she trips over her lover’s wooden legs, hits her head on the sink and dies.

Peggy’s Bible-thumping family is horrified, and chaos ensues. This is the stuff of Del Shores’ “Sordid Lives,” which opens Friday at the Theatre Alliance of Winston-Salem.

It’s the third time that Theatre Alliance has done “Sordid Lives,” the third time that Jamie Lawson has directed it, the third time that Gray Smith has played Brother Boy, and the third time that Cheryl Ann Roberts has played (sister) Latrelle.

As explained by Roberts, “Sordid Lives” is a play in four “chapters.” In the first, the sisters — Latrelle and LaVonda (Ally McCauley) get together with their Aunt Sissy (April Linscott) to discuss their mother’s death, argue over a fur stole, fight about whether or not to keep Brother Boy in the mental hospital and convince Latrelle that her son, Ty (John C. Wilson), is gay.

“Our mother has died under very interesting circumstances.” Roberts said. “Latrelle, LaVonda and Aunt Sissy have come to town for the funeral.

“Brother Boy is locked up in a mental institution because he wears women’s clothing, sings country songs and thinks he’s Tammy Wynette.

“Latrelle is self-righteous. She believes that Brother Boy should stay locked up.

“By the end of the show, though, she has kind of come to terms with her son, Ty, being gay. We see her realizing that it’s OK to accept the truth about things. She’s not necessarily a bad guy, but she has a journey that she takes, kind of an awakening.

“Latrelle allows me to be comedic but also to push making her as believable as possible and to push her to make that journey. She’s definitely a three-dimensional character.”

In the second “chapter,” LaVonda and her best friend hold up a bar and force the patrons to put on makeup and women’s clothes.

In the third chapter, we see Brother Boy in a session with his psychiatrist. In the fourth chapter, all the characters meet up at Mama Peggy’s funeral.

“Brother Boy, the role that I play, is in love with Tammy Wynette,” Smith said. “He dresses like her, he sings like her, and he wants to be her. But, out of all the characters, he’s the most true to himself. His mother has put him in a mental institution, and he’s been there for 23 years.

“What is funny, when you see the show, is all the other people are the crazy ones. They say he’s a nut, but he’s who he is. The others are hiding things.”

Writing for the L.A. Times, F. Kathleen Foley called playwright Shores the master of Texas comedy, saying, “His colorful eccentrics are dead on, teetering on a Bowie knife’s edge between the hilarious improbable and the achingly real.”

Smith agreed. “The audience members will go, ‘Oh, there’s my aunt.’ You see people that you know in these characters. Brother Boy may not be so relatable, but all the characters have their moments when they’re very funny.”

The actors cited two reasons for doing “Sordid Lives” a third time.

One, it is likely to make some money for the not-for-profit theater company.

“A lot of times we have patrons who say, ‘Please do this show again.’ ‘Sordid Lives’ is at the top of the list of things that people want to see again,” Smith said. “Plays are a lot less expensive to produce than musicals, so if we sell out a play, we actually get to put a little money in the bank.”

Two, it’s funny and fun.

“It is one of the funniest Southern comedies,” Smith said. “It’s just hysterical.”

Roberts agreed. “The people that I work with — my castmates — are absolutely fabulous,” she said. “We are cracking up watching each other on stage.”

© 2012 Winston-Salem Journal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

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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."

Front Pager: Musical tells story of Leopold and Loeb

By Mary Martin Niepold
SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL
Published: February 8, 2009

Putting a murder to music may not be new, but it does curl the brain somehow. Sweeney Todd did it, and Oklahoma! to a lesser degree. Kurt Weill is famous on the subject.

Now, "The Murder of the Century" is the focus of the two-man musical from Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance, Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story.

For good ole, cold-blooded, calculated murder -- the brainchild of two very intelligent young men -- you can't ask for more than this particular, real-life crime, which happened in Chicago in 1924. It involved the murder of a young boy by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, who were longtime friends, privileged Jewish university students and, possibly, lovers.

The murder set the country on its ear and immortalized the eloquent, 12-hour indictment of the death penalty by the duo's defense attorney, Clarence Darrow.

Jamie Lawson, the artistic director of Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance, is moving the company beyond its reliable roster of edgy humor. Lawson said he's still not sure why he picked Thrill Me, but he knows that he likes it and serves as the show's director and one of its co-stars.

He hasn't acted for nine years. His last role as one of several cowboys in Crazy For You is hardly preparation for playing a cold-blooded murderer who sings.

In this show, he plays Leopold, the younger of the pair who didn't necessarily concoct the murder but needed so much to be loved that he went along with his friend, Loeb, who enjoyed Nietzchean "superman" fantasies. Together, they came up with "the perfect crime," and newspapers relished headlines about "thrill killers."

Needing love from a madman may not be new subject matter, but in this show it's all set to music. First performed at the Midtown International Theater Festival in New York in 2003, the musical by Stephen Dolginoff (book, musics and lyrics) went to a larger Off-Broadway venue in 2005 by the York Theatre Company.

Songs are simply titled: "Thrill Me," "Way Too Far" and "Keep Your Deal with Me."

Lawson says that directing a two-man musical is easy enough. Bryan Daniel plays Loeb, and Lawson describes directing as something like, "OK, Bryan, you sing that line. OK. Then you come to me."

The subject matter, however, keeps Lawson thinking.

"The murder was so shocking," he said. "Why would two wealthy, everything-going-for-them kids want to do something like this? What was the motivation?

"Anything you do today is captured on the Internet or by your neighbor.

"We're just fascinated with this stuff," he said. "It's an episode on CSI, for heaven's sake. It's a history lesson to music. It's CNN, 2009."

Leopold and Loeb's murder of a 14-year-old boy who lived in their same wealthy neighborhood entailed killing him, then pouring hydrochloric acid on the body. Afterward, they had dinner.

One of the intrigues of the material, Lawson said, is comparing what happened in 1924 to the bombardment of violent and titillating imagery and behaviors we live with every day today.

"I can't figure out if there was the same amount of this kind of behavior back then and we just didn't have YouTube to tell us about it. Or do we have more of it because we're bombarded with this flow of stimulus? From the moment I get up, there's this constant stream of information -- the computer, the TV, even the billboards are everywhere."

The show is told from the point of view of Lawson's character, Leopold. It's 1958, he's up for parole for the fifth time, and flashbacks take the audience to the planning of the murder -- and the twisted relationship between the two men.

What's revealed in the show is that they had signed a contract. "The contract was to fulfill one another's needs whatever they are," Lawson said.

Loeb was killed in prison, and Leopold was paroled after 33 years whereupon he moved to Puerto Rico.

Lawson is still thinking about his choice.

"I really don't know what compelled me to this show -- to picking it -- and to being in it. I don't usually play characters so deviant. I'm used to fluff, playing fluffy characters."

■ The Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance presents Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story at 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Feb. 19-21, and at 2 p.m. on Feb. 22. Tickets are $16 for adults and $14 for seniors and students. 1047 Northwest Blvd., Winston-Salem, N. C. Call 336-723-7777.

A New Dress: Little Theatre name change aims to help build audience

By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: January 30, 2009

The "Twin City" moniker is popular in Winston-Salem. It identifies a restaurant, a chorus and a minor-league hockey team.

And in September, it will figure prominently in the new name of an old theater company -- when the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem officially becomes Twin City Stage.

Norman Ussery, the Little Theatre's executive director, said he will announce the name change tonight at the Arts Council Theatre before the Little Theatre begins its run of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. The new name will coincide with Little Theatre's 75th-anniversary season.

The name change is being introduced gradually. Current patrons will be reminded of it during I Love You and two other shows this season. And when the 2009-2010 season brochure goes out in May, it will feature the new name as well, along with the original one to avoid confusion.

Ussery said last week that the Little Theatre has 1,500 subscribers and 500 "frequent" patrons.

"They know who we are and what we do, but we discovered that there are more than (these) 2,000 people living in Winston-Salem," Ussery said with a smile. "They don't know what we do. They don't know where we are.… If we're going to get a new audience, then we have to do some new things."

One of those "things" is a new name and a logo to go along with it.

Ussery said that the decision followed both extensive study -- several focus groups with different constituents were consulted -- and hiring the Russell Agency to develop a marketing and branding strategy. A $30,000 grant from the Winston-Salem Foundation underwrote the cost of hiring the agency.

The new name will help clear up confusion among people who have mistaken the Little Theatre for the Children's Theatre of Winston-Salem, Ussery said, and it will better describe what the company does, namely offer a "professional, contemporary product." The theater operates on a yearly budget of about $800,000. It offers plays, musicals, education programs, a second-stage series and collaborative efforts with other organizations.

"We truly feel that the name that has been selected is representative of the theater and everything it offers," said Carrie Collins, who chairs the theater's board.

The term "Little Theatre" won't disappear from the theater's publicity entirely. The new logo has a tagline that reads: "Put a Little Theatre in Your Life."

"It not only pays homage to the Little Theatre name but it's also a call to action to try it," Ussery said.

Theater officials say that the adoption of "Twin City Stage" is part of a larger strategy to increase awareness, increase ticket sales, attract more people to auditions and sign up more volunteers.

To get an idea of what the theater company hopes to achieve by changing its name, consider that the Arts Council Theatre has 540 seats. The Little Theatre generally performs a musical 11 times, a play seven times.

Ussery said that he would love to sell out each show and add two more performances to each run. He called such a scenario realistic because research indicates that the new name will help change audience perceptions of the Little Theatre and lead to greater ticket sales. If two performances are added to each run, the Little Theatre will realize a 15 percent gain in yearly ticket revenue on its current sales of $300,000, assuming that the performances sell out.

Danny Alvarez, a local theater fan, attends shows in New York and has served the Little Theatre as a stage manager. He said he believes that the name change is necessary, pointing out that community theater often comes with a stigma.

"You think glorified high-school productions," he said. This statement goes along with what Ussery believes, namely that several misconceptions are associated with the word "Little."

"People assume that either it's a small room with about 100 seats in it and a bunch of amateurs running around in grandma's bed sheets for costumes, or that it's really geared for children," he said.

In 2000, Alvarez started working across the street from the Arts Council Theatre, where the Little Theatre also has its offices. Until 2003 -- when some friends persuaded him to approach the Little Theatre about getting involved -- he didn't believe the company put on high-quality shows and stayed away from it. His perceptions changed dramatically when he started participating in shows.

"Yes, it is community theater, but it's as high-end community theater that you're able to produce," he said. "People need to know it's close to professional theater."

■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.

'50s Echoes: Quartet puts on lively show

By Mary Martin Niepold
SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL
Published: December 14, 2008

It's Christmas, it's the 1950s, and four guys with hearts as big as the world appear for a last performance. They're called the Plaids, a singing quartet who thrive on harmony -- in heart and song -- and they're the stars of the holiday musical,Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings, that opened at the Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance on Friday night.

Put it this way: If you loved to sing and Rosemary Clooney had called to ask you to sing -- or if you had a chance to sing backup for Perry Como on his hit television show from the same era -- well, if you're the Plaids, you'd jump at the chance while also offering your own version of a holiday show. And that is what we see on stage.

The Plaids make it up as they go, so theirs is a holiday show unlike any other.

Carols, a few hymns, doo-wop dancing and some hits of the times -- everything from "Sh-Boom" to "Mambo Italiano" get their own Plaid version from these lovable singers.

Hosannas get thrown into the lyrics of ballads, and the popular Harry Belafonte hit, "Day-O," somehow comes out with a Christmas message, complete with grass skirts and maracas.

Laughs, puns and pratfalls round out the fun.

Written by Stuart Ross, Forever Plaid may sound confusing, but it's not, because the storyline is this: A quartet of just average Joes wants everyone to be happy, and they'll sing and dance their hearts out to make sure it happens.

Their names are Frankie, Sparky, Jinx and Smudge, and their true mission is "to make people feel cozy."

The rigors of singing and dancing non-stop are daunting, but each of the four actors handles solos admirably, while never overshadowing his buddies.

Gray Smith appears as Frankie, Craig Faircloth as Sparky and Neil Shepherd as Jinx.

The standout is David Joy as Smudge, the Sartre-quoting intellectual in the bunch who deadpans his way into your heart.

Director Jamie Lawson goes for big laughs in his remake of television's popular The Ed Sullivan Show that trots out everything from stuffed dogs being thrown through hula hoops to Groucho Marx and the singing Chipmunks.

Music director Travis Horton demonstrates fine talent with the keyboard, and we get to see his musical trio on stage.

If you lived through the '50s, you'll wonder how you ever got through all this the first time, but you'll definitely have a good time revisiting when it's the Plaids taking you there.

Harmony, they'll tell you, is something we can all create.

Update 12/21: I was house manager for the show last night. WXII was there shooting a webspot. David and Jamie were both interviewed. Mary Barnhardt was shot handing the "patron" a ticket and I was shot handing the "patron" a program. It was kinda cool.

I was able to watch the show, and I must say that I think it's the best show I've seen WSTA do. I have to agree with Mary; David Joy was a stand out. He brought such nuance to his Smudge character and maintained the character details throughout. I've watched David grow as an actor, and I'm proud to have shared the stage with him on a couple of occasions.

If you haven't seen the show you only have one more chance. The last performance is 8p on Tuesday!

Audience gets intimate with 'Cemetery'

Leslie Mizell, Special to Go Triad

WINSTON-SALEM -- Community theater is filled with people who go that extra mile to put on a show. Few of them do it quite as literally as John Collier.

The director of the Stained Glass Playhouse's "The Cemetery Club," which opens tomorrow night, commutes 26 miles daily from his home in Graham to his job as an oncology nurse at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill. Tack on an evening play rehearsal an hour from home in the other direction, and he'll have added 160 miles to his odometer by the end of the day.

"You go where the good work is," he says. "But I'll admit the price of gas is making me pick my shows a little more carefully. And I did just trade in my Highlander for a Corolla."

Collier has been acting in community theater for 25 years and directing plays and musicals for half that time. It was the touching humor in "The Cemetery Club" that drew him to the project.

"I saw the show about eight years ago in Burlington," he recalls. "The writing is very Neil Simon-esque. The humor is there, but it's a drama with comedy. It's about loss and forgiveness and redemption -- all heavy themes -- but it's disguised with laughs."

The 1990 play, which had a short 56-performance Broadway run, is about three New York widows who meet once a month for tea before visiting their husbands' graves in Queens. Written by Ivan Menchell, it shows the deft hand with one-liners he learned at the knee of his father, the late comedian Lou Menchell. Extremely popular throughout the world, it has often been compared to the heart-tugging "Steel Magnolias."

Collier likes the intimacy of the relationships among the women, which is shared by the audience in the small 90-seat Stained Glass Playhouse.

"The acting has to be subtle; it can't be bigger than life," he says. "A lot of people who auditioned primarily worked on bigger stages and weren't able to pull back their performances. But our cast easily handles the challenge."

Collier, who deals with issues of death and dying through his day job, recognizes an honesty and truth in "The Cemetery Club" which shows Collier that Menchell had dealt with loss. In fact, the play is partially inspired by Menchell's mother, an actress-singer who retired from the stage for more than a decade after the crushing blow of her husband's death in 1979.

"Each of the three women in 'The Cemetery Club' is at a different point in their grieving process," Collier says. "[Doris] is obviously not going to move past her husband's death. [Ida] is still respectful of her marriage, but is ready to explore having a new relationship.

"And [Lucille] has moved well beyond her husband's death since her marriage was not that happy."

Leslie Mizell has been covering the Triad's theater scene for more than a decade. Her column runs weekly in Go Triad. Contact her at LAMizell@aol.com.

Article in the Go Triad

From bayou to off-Broadway
By Leslie Mizell, Special to Go Triad

WINSTON-SALEM -- It's a long way from Louisiana to New York, but two bayou playwrights with shows opening in Winston-Salem next week found success there at a very early age.

The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem is staging Larry Shue's "The Foreigner," a modern-day classic comedy, opening Feb. 1. That same night, the Stained Glass Playhouse will debut Judi Ann Mason's "Livin' Fat" for Piedmont audiences.

Actor-playwright Shue, a New Orleans native, debuted "My Emperor's New Clothes" off-Broadway in 1968 when he was just 22 years old. However, he wouldn't find real accolades until nearly 15 years later when he wrote a pair of comedies, "The Nerd" and "The Foreigner," as a playwright in residence at Milwaukee Repertory Theater .

"The Nerd" premiered in London in 1981 and had a successful Broadway run in 1987; "The Foreigner" spent 18 months off-Broadway and won the Outer Critics Circle award for best play.

"The Foreigner" of the title is Charlie Baker, a painfully shy Englishman who is vacationing with his friend "Froggy" LaSeur at a Georgia hunting lodge when soldier Froggy is unexpectedly called up for maneuvers.

Stranded with a bunch of strangers, Charlie pretends to be a foreigner who doesn't understand English. But far from isolating him from the lodge owners and guests, his inability to communicate means he finds himself taken into their confidences and becomes the unwitting witness to their secrets.
One secret becomes particularly volatile, and Charlie suddenly finds himself helping his new friends protect themselves from the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sadly, "Wenceslas Square " (1988) would be Shue's fifth and final produced comedy. The playwright died in a plane crash in 1985. He was 39.

Mason was born 10 years after Shue in Shreveport, La. Her writing career was off to an auspicious start when she received the Norman Lear Award for Comedy from the Kennedy Center while a student at Grambling State University.

Like Shue, she first found professional success at 22, selling a script to the long-running TV comedy "Good Times" in 1978. Since then, she has worked as easily in comedy as drama, and for television, stage and movies alike.

She also wrote scripts for "Sanford and Son," "A Different World," "Beverly Hills, 90210," and "I'll Fly Away."

She penned films "Sophie & the Moonhanger" for television and the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit" for the silver screen. In between, she found time to write three dozen plays and youth musicals, including "Eddie Lee Baker Is Dead" and "A Star Ain't Nothin' But a Hole in Heaven."

"Livin' Fat," which the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company debuted off-Broadway in 1976, is set in that recession-ridden era. Times are tough for the Cooper family. Although money is tight, their affection for each other is limitless.

Everything changes, however, when son David Lee, a college graduate forced by the economy to work as a bank janitor, interrupts a robbery. In their haste to get away, the thieves drop a $50,000 bundle of money, which David Lee grabs and hides from his employers and the police.

Now the religious and law-abiding Coopers are faced with a dilemma: The money would allow David Lee's father to quit one of his jobs, his mother to stop cleaning other people's houses, his grandmother to enjoy her golden years, his sister to go to college, and himself to get a fresh start and marry his girlfriend. But can they sacrifice their scruples enough to benefit from ill-gotten gains?

Contact Leslie Mizell at LAMizell@aol.com