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Peer Reviews Sorting
Out "Sordid Lives" Entire contents are copyright © 2008, Craig Nolan Highley. All rights reserved.
Playwright Del Shores' Sordid Lives is a hilarious play, pure and simple. When the Louisville Repertory Company staged it four years ago, it was such a commercial and critical hit that they had to add another weekend of performances. So it's not surprising they would decide to stage it again for their fifteenth anniversary season, even if it does seem a little soon. The current production, playing at the MeX Theatre at the Kentucky Center through February 10, is a solid enough production taken on its own terms. Unfortunately, the company is making so much of it being "back by popular demand" that it invites comparisons to their earlier production, and under such scrutiny it doesn't stand up as well. That's not to say this is a bad production; far from it. The show is still hysterically funny and, for the most part, well acted; in fact, some of the performances here are among the best I've seen this year. There are even a few actors whose performances are improvements on the earlier cast. They are working from a newly revised script (from Shores himself) that incorporates a few characters and details from the popular film version that were not included in the original play.
Where the show suffers is in some pacing problems (the second scene, for example, which should have been the funniest and most energetic, instead drags interminably) and one or two performers who need to work a lot more on their characters. During the performance I attended, a line was dropped and the actor involved literally froze, unable to get back on track despite the obvious attempts from the other actors to feed the line back to him. It stopped the play dead in its tracks and was just cringe-worthy! The story is set in motion when Peggy (seen in a coffin in the person of Alyssa Harley) is killed in a bizarre accident. She has tripped over the wooden legs of her married lover while going to the bathroom of a seedy hotel room and cracked her skull, and her dysfunctional family is in an uproar in the days leading up to the funeral. Peggy has had her son Brother Boy (Darren McGee) locked up in a mental institution for the past twenty-three years because he is a gay cross-dresser with a Tammy Wynette fixation. Her grandson Ty (Todd Zeigler), a professional actor coming to terms with his own secret homosexual lifestyle, struggles to decide whether to go home for the funeral. Her sister Sissy (Janice Walter) has picked the wrong time to quit smoking. And her daughters Latrelle (Amy Lewis) and Lavonda (Alice Ryan Chiles) bicker over whether Peggy should be buried with her favorite fur stole. Reprising their roles from LRC's earlier production are Darren McGee and Alice Ryan Chiles. Both give stellar performances, and I can't imagine any other local actors as these characters. Chiles gives pretty much the same performance as before as the foul-mouthed but lovable Lavonda, but McGee actually seems to have matured with the character and gives what is easily the show's best performance as the over-the-top and hysterical Brother Boy. He imbues the character with just the right amount of humor and pathos, and his big scene is easily the best part of the whole show. Amy Lewis is very effective at portraying Ty's queen-of-denial mother Latrelle, a character that is so buttoned up at the play's start that it provides quite an emotional arc as her hard exterior melts through the course of the play. If you can suspend your disbelief at her obvious age-inappropriateness, it is a very strong performance. There are also some notable improvements in casting from the earlier production. Todd Zeigler conveys a childish innocence in his portrayal of Ty that is a welcome change from the rather bitter and whiny way the character is usually portrayed. Michelle Chalmers is just hysterical as Dr. Eve, Brother-Boy's alcoholic, nymphomaniac shrink who is determined to "de-homosexualize" him. And Janice Walter resists the tendency to play Sissy in the cartoonish manner usually reserved for the character; she is so natural that you feel her frustration with her family's bickering and jump every time she snaps that rubber band on her arm (her character's feeble attempt at smoking cessation therapy). Bill Breuer's direction has created a strangely low-key production of a show that is intended to be played much more broadly. The set by Brian Shaw is impressive and realistic, but apparently a bit too elaborate for the MeX, as it led to some painfully long scene changes. The costume choices were occasionally questionable, especially the use of some really bad wigs that did the actress wearing them no favors. On the other hand, the two very over-the-top drag costumes worn by McGee were fabulous! All in all, this is a fun show that is not without its flaws but will still keep you laughing, sometimes screamingly so; and when all is said and done, that's exactly what it is intended to do.
Sordid Lives Starring Michelle Chalmers, Alice Ryan Chiles, Katie Doyle, Robert Florio, Jim Jeffries, Amy Lewis, Darren McGee, J. Scott O'Neill, Ken Parsons, Melissa Riddle, Tiffany Taylor, Janice Walter, and Todd Zeigler. Posted February 4, 2008
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