The university’s Ghostlight Repertory Theatre performed a pair of intertwined one-act plays titled “Laundry & Bourbon” and “Lone Star” this weekend.
Written by James McLure in the late 1970s and directed by senior theatre major Matt Gieseke, the production is two separate plays with related characters. One play is about women and the other about men, coming together to create a Southern comedy about individuals coping with everyday struggles, both simple and profound.
If you’re from Texas, Mississippi or just about anywhere in the South, you’ve seen these characters before. You may even know them by heart. They are your neighbors or the folks you see at Cracker Barrel, and yet, these characters manage to swing around a degree of depth to stray away from being too stereotypical.
This is in no small part due to the cast’s stellar performances. Each student actor displayed an incredible knowledge of both hearty character and a strong sense of humor, which helped the twofold nature of the play fly by with ease.
And don’t let it be put lightly, this play was a laugh riot. It really does capture a notion that only other Southerners can truly grasp: people from the South can turn anything into a spectacle. The tales of the mundane become tales of epic proportions, and wild stories only get wilder when told through a Southern mouthpiece.
Highlights from the play include a mother regaling how she has spent the last year of her life attempting to learn how to play bridge, completely neglecting the health of her husband and children in the process. Another comes when an inebriated Vietnam veteran relates his first sexual encounter in high school, including a boisterous, near poetic comparison of his female partner’s sex organs to the Grand Canyon.
Moments such as these put the audience in an absolute fit of hysterical laughter, in part because of just how the insane dialogue is coupled with the phenomenal student performances. But the laughter was also because most of us there had likely heard similar outrageous stories at our local Southern comfort restaurant, hair salon or family reunion.
However, while the humor was expected, what was perhaps the most surprising element of the production was the amount of genuine drama it incorporated. Fractured relationships, coming home from war and the sweet sting of nostalgia help these characters feel more real.
And of course, these disheartening experiences can be recovered from through what this play excels at: its distilled ethos of simple conversations and a good sense of humor.
The whole production had a very handmade quality. This was apparent in everything from the down-home characters to the simple set design, which featured the barebone essentials: some seats, a table and the front of a small wooden home, complete with a short fence.
These elements worked to the production’s advantage, emphasizing solely the characters and their dialogue, which were the strength of the show.
“Laundry & Bourbon” and “Lone Star” was the student theatre group’s first production for the fall season. Ghostlight Repertory Theatre will perform “Black Comedy” from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2. For more information on upcoming productions, visit the company’s website.
