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 Sordid
Lives
by Del Shores
June 15 - July 7, 2007
Directed by Robert Matson
Carpenter Square Theatre
serves up a heaping helping of Southern-fried comedy with
SORDID LIVES by Del Shores. The hilarious
exposé of small-town Texas life is full of love, loss, and big hair.
Told in four
"chapters," the play begins
shortly after the accidental death of town matriarch Peggy Ingram. Poor Peggy
breathed her last in a seedy motel where she tripped over her lover’s wooden
legs and bashed her head on the motel room sink. Her lover? A married man with
children.
Sometimes it takes a death to
bring a family together, but not necessarily Peggy’s family. Her tragic death
brings out the best, the worst, and the most peculiar in her family and friends.
As they try to make funeral arrangements, long-suffering Aunt Sissy tries to
keep the peace, but she has picked the wrong day to quit smoking. When Peggy’s
two daughters, Latrelle and LaVonda, arrive, they feud over their mother’s mink
stole and whether they can bury the truth of their mother’s affair with G.W.
Soon LaVonda joins G.W.'s
spurned spouse Noleta to seek revenge on her cheating husband.
Fueled by liquor and inspired by the movie characters
Thelma and Louise, they head to the local honky-tonk where they use guns and
face make-up to terrorize G.W., as well as several of the local barflies.
Above all, the Ingrams must
come to terms with two men in their family: Latrelle’s estranged son Ty who has
become a soap opera star and is openly gay, and "Brother
Boy" Earl, a cross-dresser who has spent over twenty
years in a state hospital because of his obsession with dresses, wigs and Tammy
Wynette.
Once the audience learns the
truth of all of the characters' "sordid
lives," the play culminates at Peggy’s funeral with a
scene that is by turns poignant and hilarious.
Born in rural Texas, Del
Shores became an actor and a writer for theatre and television. During its long
Los Angeles run, SORDID LIVES received numerous
Critics Choice and DramaLogue Awards. When Shores adapted and directed the play
for film (starring Delta Burke, Beau Bridges and Olivia Newton-John), it
developed a cult following. The phenomenon began in Palm Springs, where
SORDID LIVES played at a movie theatre for two years,
with people attending in costume and saying favorite lines, reminiscent of the
followers of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Since
then, it has become an enormous word-of-mouth hit on DVD. This year, Shores
developed a prequel television series of SORDID LIVES
which will play on the relatively new Logo network.
Carpenter Square Theatre is
supported in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council and the National Endowment for
the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Kirkpatrick Family Fund and
Allied Arts. The play is an Allied Arts City Card event.
This show
is for mature audiences and contains strong language and adult situations.
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