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| L to R: Karen Nelsen, Charissa Adams and Kim Morris. Photo by Erik Stuhaug. |
Review: Wedding Belles by Alan Bailey and Ronnie Claire Edwards. Directed by Karen Lund. With Charissa Adams, Gretchen Douma, Kim Morris, Karen Nelson, Pat Sibley. Now through October 23 at Taproot Theatre.
I’ve whined in past theater reviews and columns about my disdain for Southern Fried Theater. Don’t get me wrong; there are some amazing works of art featuring Southern characters and situations…the entire canon of Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote…August: Osage County…Faulkner…Tennessee Williams…Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil…The Little Foxes…Designing Women at its best…Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls…the “Eunice” sketches on The Carol Burnett Show, (but NOT Mama’s Family). That’s a pretty extensive list of great art and entertainment featuring the citizens of old Dixie.
Then, there’s the dregs of Old Dixie…corny, cliched, ham handed theatrics with cartoon characters all colorfully named and full of the dickens and they fall into two primary categories, the ribald and the heartfelt and sweet, (sometimes they mix the two, like in Steel Magnolias). Yes, many of these entertainments can be fun to watch, or read, or listen to, but they are about as filling and long lasting as a mouthful of carnival cotton candy. You eat it and five minutes you’re hungry again and left with a sticky hand and a slight case of acid reflux. Taproot Theatre’s production of Wedding Belles is too well acted and produced to give you heartburn, but it is sticky and it is sweet and an hour after you’ve left the theater you’ll be home watching a rerun of Mad Men or sitting up all night reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find” for the 23rd time.
It’s the summer of 1942 and the good townsfolk of Eufala Springs, Texas are doing all they can for the war effort, especially the ladies of the Garden Club who are preparing for their big annual gala. But when a young teen bride is found stranded at the bus depot waiting for the arrival of her soldier fiance, the ladies are determined to give her the wedding of the year. Naturally, there are some secrets to be revealed and some tears to be shed and a large number of one liners to be comically snapped and since we’re in Southern Fried Theater country you can also expect characters named “Ima Jean Tatum” and “Bobrita” and “Glendine” and kooky hats and gossipy party line phone conversations and hot steamy weather and hound dogs and hurricanes and funny jokes about Baptists and of course there is a trampy female but since this is a family play, she’s not really a slut; she just gets married and divorced a lot. Fortunately, we are spared any insulting “darkie” characters, (Eufala Springs is apparently a Sunset town; no people of color allowed), or village idiots, or child preachers, or baptisms in the closest river, or any scenes involving a choir, a lynch mob, or graveside sobbing. Maybe they are saving that for the sequel, “Wedding Belles II: Bobrita’s Revenge”.
Obviously, I’m not a huge fan of the genre and the play closely resembles a not particularly memorable episode of Mama’s Family but, like that junky sit-com of the 1980’s, Wedding Belles is frequently amusing and it’s basically harmless and destined to be an often performed play by community theaters in search of family friendly material. It also helps that the Taproot Theatre company are masters in this genre of entertainment and are staffed with a talented group of designers, directors, crew and actors who know how to put on a professional and entertaining night of wholesome theater. The sets, lighting, sound and especially the costumes by Sarah Burch Gordon are expertly done and authentic to the period and setting. Karen Lund has the difficult job of staging a show in a small space with a crowded set and five actresses almost continuously on a thrust stage and manages to maintain sight lines and keep up the pacing on a show that veers from quiet and poignant to loud and boisterous in the blink of an eye. Everyone behind the scenes has done a very excellent job with this show.
But, the real reason to see this show is ONSTAGE and the five actresses in Wedding Belles are all consummate professionals who know their way around a stage and these broad, comic, Southern characters. Karen Nelson has the toughest job as the “straightest” character, Laura Lee whose backyard is the setting for this one set show. She gets the fewest comedic lines and the most dramatic story arc (she’s refusing to accept the recent death of her husband, the town mayor) but her quietly intense and focused performance anchors the show and the other characters. Gretchen Douma as the bossy Bobrita and Kim Morris as her neurotic spinster sister make a compelling and contrasting duo with Ms Douma clearly relishing her role as the town bigmouth and Ms Morris equally fine as the high strung Violet, though the actress was clearly a bit too young for her role. Pat Sibley’s much married Glendine was obviously a polite take on the hot pantsed Southern Belle slut stereotype and an audience favorite…any similarities between Glendine and Blanche Devereaux are purely intentional, I’m sure. Finally, adorable Charissa Adams was perfectly cast as the tiny, waifish bride to be Ima Jean Tatum, and while the name is bit too much for my taste, the naive, hopeless charm of the character and the actress who played her won over both the other characters in the play and the audience itself. All five ladies are the fire that drives this production and the main reason to see it.
Who’s this play for? Folks looking for wholesome, Southern Fried, family fun and a night of light entertainment very professionally produced and performed. But, I will say that as I left the theater and walked down the street, an older man walking with an older woman who had also just exited the theater, remarked to her, “That was sweet…fluffy, but sweet.” Even the target audience for this play, agrees with me.
-Michael Strangeways
