Yellow
Del Shores is one funny playwright. His comedies have long held their own in the rough-and-tumble competitive theatrical world out there; “Cheatin’,” “Daddy’s Dyin’ (Who’s Got the Will?),” “Sordid Lives,” “Southern Baptist Sissies,” and “The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife,” are still produced around the world. They’re worth seeing as expertly satirical jabs at the American South and its strange ideas of family, its sexism, racism, and, especially, its homophobia.
Shores, who self-identifies as a bi-sexual with two daughters and a husband, wants the world to stop its homophobic nonsense. And he uses comedy to get across his points.
His latest, “Yellow,” is a more nuanced story: a well-adjusted family in Vicksburg, Mississippi, who have to take in the tragedy of a life cut short by liver-failure (the “yellow” of the title) as well as a rebellious teen whose dramatic life will, indeed, allow her to be an actress. Added to that is the daughter’s best friend, a gay-boy-in-the-making, whose dotty, religious-zealot, mother drives him away with her shrill over-the-top religious pronouncements.
It’s a lovely tale, slightly over-wrought in the agony that the son’s illness brings to these decent folk. But at two-and-a-half hours, far too many tales are on display, including the mother’s infidelity, the daughter’s jealousy of the attention paid to the older son, and her friend’s delayed coming-out as a gayman (every character in the play and most of the audience knows way-ahead of him, a highly-comic moment when he admits that he’s “not sure” about all that).
The problems in the script may have been ignored because Shores has directed it himself. Theatre being the collaborative event it is, to write, produce and direct doesn’t necessarily allow for other viewpoints that might temper the dramatic builds that overlap each other. It has hurt, but not killed, his play.
But his casting – ah, that is perfect, with Kristin McCullough as the wayward mother, Kate; David Cowgill as her hard-as-nails husband, Bobby; Susan Leslie as the bonkers religious nut, Sister Timothea; Luke McClure as the dying son, Dayne), Evie Louise Thompson giving it all she’s got as the teen-queen, Grace) and Matthew Scott Montgomery as gayboy Randall (who refuses his mother’s name for him, Matthew-Mark). This tight-knit cast brings full force to their characters and delivers Shores’ well-known character idiosyncrasies to us intact.
YELLOW runs through July 25th, 2010, at the Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood. Performances are at 8pm Wednesday-Saturday, with a 2pm matinee on Sundays and a 7pm evening show.