Small Town @ CHAC

Now, don't let the chicken- and cat-rape, possum-gutting, or deep-frying a sparrow put you off. (Or the hamster, which we don't have time to get into.) There's a lot of tenderness to playwright Kelleen Conway Blanchard's depiction of small-town life. And if former Pork Queen Lucinda is one-eyed, the Sheriff's plastic cranium doesn't seal that well, bemulleted Bud has testicular size-and-quantity issues, and Lucinda's brother Stu Lionel has a too-lively fascination with dead things (and how they get that way), that just says something vital about what it means to be human -- any rich, vibrant tapestry has got to have a few loose ends.

It's hard to imagine getting more snorted laughs and eyes-wide guffaws out of $10, and that's a fact. Now, you may protest that the white trash thing has been done. You may say, "37 vivisected mailmen? Come on!" Hey, art is a mirror to life. You don't even have to leave this site to find worse and even worser examples that all is not right on American continent.

What Small Town has got in spades is authenticity, and we're not just referring to Bud's ballsy a capella country version of the Scorps power ballad "No One Like You" (complete with porn ass-slapping for the "I imagine the thing's we'll do" line), or the ensemble's bluegrassy take on Outkast's "Hey Ya." We'd never have guessed from seeing Kelleen in her daily Goth attire that she's glimpsed the soul of the residents of American hamlets and hollers, and if the plot can make you feel like you've suffered some moonshine-induced blackouts, screw it, there's a case to be made that this is all true to the messy, untied-up, one-damn-thing-after-another lives of small town folks. Last night the place was sold out, and the applause went on for a long time.

Lerner & Loewe, suck down an empty jelly jar of hooch and meet Blanchard & Fetzer. We'd like to thank director Bret Fetzer for the concern extended to every facet of these grubby little people, the John-Waters-like compassion and understanding. We've seen some Annex work over the years where the cast might have wanted anonymity -- not here. We were in awe of Betsy Morris as Lucinda. Not everyone can pull off that drawled, trailing-off conversational add-on, developed after years of being unlistened to. And tomcatty Bud (Daniel Christensen), nice-boy Sheriff Dwayne (Chris Dietz), hairtriggered Ruby (Teri Lazzara), and "slow" Stu Lionel (Aaron LaPlante) each manage to truly inhabit a small-town life: the everybody-knows-each-other's-business approach and deference due to unusual hobbies and life pursuits.

The tricky part is finding the actual theater. We thought it was downstairs at CHAC, and it sort of is, but you go through this door just to the left as you enter, and down a hallway, then take another left and climb some stairs, go through another door, and you're in the Annex lobby.

Small Town
Annex Theatre @ CHAC
7:30pm, Tues. & Weds., through February 21
Tickets: $10/$7 students/seniors

Photo by Jennifer Cabarrus. Pictured, Daniel Christensen and Betsy Morris.