Review - Sordid Lives

Sordid Lives

Easy Street Players

http://www.easystreetplayers.org

Growing up in a small ranch town in South Dakota, I pride myself in knowing all of the intricacies of white trash society, from the tube tops to the overdone make-up and hair, to the fine cuisine of macaroni-tuna casserole sprinkled with potato chips. Of course, being a Cosmopolitan-loving cultured gay man in an urban metropolis, I did not achieve this knowledge by way of experience, but rather from observation. (yeah, right).

Sordid Lives, currently being performed at the Athenaeum Theatre by the Easy Street Players, is definitely what the program insists: a black comedy about white trash. A stage adaptation of the 2000 gay cult-classic movie of the same name (starring Olivia Newton-John, Delta Burke, Beau Bridges, and openly-gay Leslie Jordan), Sordid Lives is set in a small town in Texas. The action of the play revolves around the funeral of the Peg-Bundy-esque’s family matriarch, who died when, on her way to the hotel bathroom, she tripped over her lover’s wooden legs and slammed her head into the motel bathroom sink. Sounds like the premise of a Jerry Spring Show!

Besides the enjoyable inanity of the scenes and characters, the show’s strengths lie a few underlying messages peppered within the mayhem. For example, when goody-two-shoes Latrelle is faced with the fact that she is in denial of her son’s homosexuality, she yells out “Did you ever think that I don’t want to know the truth?”. What gay person has not felt that their family feels the same way about them?

The cast is an energetic bunch of young and semi-seasoned actors. They obviously are having a lot of fun onstage, which makes the play even more jovial. But the youngness of the cast also causes problems - the characters they are portraying range from the 20-something gay son to the 50-ish institutionalized cross-dressing uncle, Brother Boy. Such a young cast could never be able to successfully pull this off, reminding me of the feeling you get seeing a high-school production of Annie Get Your Gun.

Sordid Lives is not for everybody. The production values are rough. The Southern accents are uneven. But if one greatly enjoyed the movie, you might be interested in seeing how it works onstage. Though the adaptation of the movie is fairly-well written, I left the theatre with one white-trash burning question: Why was this stage adaptation, along with my Grandma’s rhubarb pie, ever created?

Rating: Okay (2 stars)

Reviewed by Scotty Zacher

[email protected]



	Sweet Smell of Success *Sordid Lives* Easy Street Players http://www.easystreetplayers.org Growing up in a small ranch town in South Dakota, I pride myself in knowing all of the intricacies of white trash society, from the tube tops to the overdone make-up and hair, to the fine cuisine of macaroni-tuna casserole sprinkled with potato chips. Of course, being a Cosmopolitan-loving cultured gay man in an urban metropolis, I did not achieve this knowledge by way of experience, but rather from observation. (yeah, right). Sordid Lives, currently being performed at the Athenaeum Theatre by the Easy Street Players, is definitely what the program insists: a black comedy about white trash. A stage adaptation of the 2000 gay cult-classic movie of the same name (starring Olivia Newton-John, Delta Burke, Beau Bridges, and openly-gay Leslie Jordan), Sordid Lives is set in a small town in Texas. The action of the play revolves around the funeral of the Peg-Bundy-esque’s family matriarch, who died when, on her way to the hotel bathroom, she tripped over her lover’s wooden legs and slammed her head into the motel bathroom sink. Sounds like the premise of a Jerry Spring Show! Besides the enjoyable inanity of the scenes and characters, the show’s strengths lie a few underlying messages peppered within the mayhem. For example, when goody-two-shoes Latrelle is faced with the fact that she is in denial of her son’s homosexuality, she yells out “Did you ever think that I don’t want to know the truth?”. What gay person has not felt that their family feels the same way about them? The cast is an energetic bunch of young and semi-seasoned actors. They obviously are having a lot of fun onstage, which makes the play even more jovial. But the youngness of the cast also causes problems - the characters they are portraying range from the 20-something gay son to the 50-ish institutionalized cross-dressing uncle, Brother Boy. Such a young cast could never be able to successfully pull this off, reminding me of the feeling you get seeing a high-school production of Annie Get Your Gun. Sordid Lives is not for everybody. The production values are rough. The Southern accents are uneven. But if one greatly enjoyed the movie, you might be interested in seeing how it works onstage. Though the adaptation of the movie is fairly-well written, I left the theatre with one white-trash burning question: Why was this stage adaptation, along with my Grandma’s rhubarb pie, ever created? Rating: Okay (2 stars) Reviewed by Scotty Zacher [email protected] Hosted by www.Geocities.ws