by RICK DANLEY // May 4, 2017
Every play should have at least one character who describes another character as smelling “like a bucket of hot links” — but only one play does. The Allen Community College theater department delivers another knockout in their production of “Dearly Beloved,” an exuberant wedding comedy set in a gossipy little town in south Texas. The show runs at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center tonight through Sunday, starting at 7:30 p.m.
THIS FAST-PACED play revolves around the Futrelle sisters, Frankie, Honey Raye, and Twink, who send themselves, each in their own way, into Texas-sized tizzies trying to coordinate a wedding for Frankie’s daughter, Tina Jo.
The sisters, who once attracted a dash of minor fame on the revival circuit with their gospel trio The Sermonettes, are together again, each one burdened by the predictable disappointments of middle age — romantic dead-ends, grief over a lost parent, annoyance with a cussed spouse.
But the energy of “Dearly Beloved” is entirely comic, and any hints of the downbeat are, with one exception, promptly painted over with a high gloss of verbal comedy.
The three sisters are, in temper and in speech, cut from the same sackcloth as former Texas governor Ann Richards, one of those rare souls who always chose the interesting word over the obvious one; who, instead of telling you that her goal was to expose corruption, would tell you that she’s gonna show you how the cow ate the cabbage.
A similar vernacular applies here, and “Dearly Beloved” is worth the price of admission for the brash poetry alone.
TAKING THE SISTERS one by one, the consistently spectacular Emily Pierce plays the man-hungry Honey Raye, who, despite keeping a hand fan fluttering in front of her face for the duration of the two acts, spends most of the play in fierce denial that menopause is upon her. “I am not in the change of life,” she drawls, while begging somebody, anybody, to puh-lease turn on the A/C.
Twink Futrelle is played with special cornpone brio by Taylor McAvoy. Twink’s burning hope is that her cold-footed boyfriend of 15 years, Wiley Hicks (Judd Wiltse), will finally agree to tie the knot. But Hicks is a man who’s been to the bottom of the bottle and likes it there, and his main contribution to the play involves a series of stumbling pratfalls which send him and his stewed liver caroming in fruitless zigzags across the length of the stage.
Frankie, the final Futrelle, is played with subtly and tenderness by ACC student Tori Whalen.
“DEARLY BELOVED” barrels down the sunlit highway of broad comedy and endless one-liners, but there is one poignant, emotionally true switchback in the road, which belongs entirely to Whalen, who delivers on the moment in spades. But we won’t spoil it here.
Ian Malcolm plays Frankie’s husband, Dub Dubberly, who contains — like every character in this feel-good romp — a soft, sugary center beneath the gunk of his outer shell. Dub loves his wife and his daughter, he loves roasting pigs, he loves his lawn chair, and he loves his camouflage baseball cap, which remains glued to his skull for the entire two-hour production.
Ashley Holloran plays twins Tina Jo and Gina Jo Dubberly with perfect understated comic intelligence. At one point she complains, “I’m never going to get this hog grease out of my dress,” and you believe her.
John Curtis Buntner is the dopey town cop, played with aw-shucks charm by Brogan Falls. Aaron Huskey plays Justin Waverly, a UPS guy turned priest, and the eventual love interest of Gina Jo. Gina Jo fell head over heels for Justin the first time he delivered a package of warm bull semen to the vet clinic where she works. The hilariously uptight mother-of-the-groom, Nelda Lightfoot, is played with an affected superiority by Ria Koch. A wonderfully expressive Chloe Bedell plays Miss Geneva Musgrave, the smoky-voiced, eye-rolling, gossipy, but ultimately morally upright, owner of the town’s bus stop/flower shop.
“DEARLY BELOVED” takes place in and around The Tabernacle of the Lamb Church in mythical Fayro, Texas, the kind of place, where as one character puts it, most outdoor weddings occur between a crepe myrtle tree and a propane tank.
The juxtaposition — between the beautiful and the ugly, the sacred and the profane — is a useful one. Despite the maniacal, over-the-top nature of “Dearly Beloved,” the play still manages to attend to the menu of basic human verities: love, family, community, forgiveness.
Not long after the death of Gov. Ann Richards, a well-known recovering alcoholic, the great Texas-based writer Molly Ivins observed of her friend: “Anyone who ever heard her speak at an AA convention knows how close laughter and tears can be.”
And it’s a fair description of this play, which relishes that proximity, and which, for all its hootin’ and hollerin’, plants its flag firmly at the junction of heartache and joy.
This review first appeared on May 4, 2017.
RG danley 