Del Shores, the man who introduced the world to Sordid Lives, Southern Baptist Sissies, and Daddy’s Dyin’: Who’s Got the Will?, now treats Celebration Theatre audiences to Six Characters In Search Of A Play brought to rib-tickling, side-splitting, occasionally tear-coaxing life by the playwright in one-man-showman mode.

 Described in press materials as “six one-of-a-kind characters [Shores] has met in real life that haven’t quite made it into one of his plays, films or TV shows,” the sordid sextet are small-town Texans the playwright has either known intimately (his Momma and his Aunt Bobbie Sue among them) or encountered briefly (e.g. waitress Yvonne, pronounced Wy-vonne), and if anyone was born to celebrate their lives, the Winters, Texas native, who grew up a “fleshy little storyteller” with a Southern Baptist preacher Daddy and a high school drama teacher Momma, is that man.

Saddled with the name Delferd (“they didn’t even spell it right”), Shores took the sense of humor that “all that damage” forced upon him and turned it into a career.

Like Noleta, LaVonda, Sissy, and the rest of the of “backsliding Southern Baptist” Sordid Lives gang, Shores’ Six Characters In Search Of A Play are eccentrics a lesser writer might easily have made objects of ridicule.

Instead, Shores turns them into characters we can’t help falling in love with (even if they do allow us to feel Blue-state big-city superior) because the playwright himself holds them in such obvious affection.

Over the course of ninety captivating minutes, Shores the actor vanishes into:

1: Sarah, “an elderly actress determined to drink and smoke herself to death before Trump is elected,” in other words the late great Sarah Hunley, who brought Sordid Lives barfly extraordinaire Juanita Bartlett to unforgettable life and hated every single Republican she ever met.

2: Marsha, “a monkey-hating lesbian with COPD” whose boobs Shores and “Brother Boy” Leslie Jordan both signed on the night a couple of Del’s most fervent fans insisted he pose with the capuchin monkey they’d brought along to the writer’s meet-and-greet.

 3: Lorraine, “a once brilliant drama teacher who has lost her mind as is now obsessed with porn,” in reality Shores’ beloved Momma, whom we meet near the end of her life when her mind had been “fried by years of opiate addiction.”

 4: Jimmy, “a homophobic Mississippi redneck with latent tendencies” that come to the surface when (in Shores’ imagination) he happens to watch Magic Mike 2 and starts to see Channing “Tator” and the “SCROTUS” decision to legalize gay marriage in a different light. (“You know, if he kissed me, I don’t think I’d hate it.””

5: Yvonne, “a vegetarian-hating waitress with no more fucks to give,”
encountered in a redneck Dallas diner called Mama’s Daughters, hardly the best eatery for a pescatarian like his lunchmate his (and Yellow star) Kristen McCullough.

6: Aunt Bobbie Sue, “the loudmouthed racist republican with a heart of gold” who wore her hair like Bobbie Gentry and Priscilla Presley well into her 70, a woman who told Del when he “decided to be gay” that she would treat him “just like he was a normal human bein’,” which was her way of saying she loved him unconditionally

 Though Six Characters In Search Of A Play could just as easily have been written as a showcase for Shores regulars like Ann Walker, Beth Grant, Dale Dickey, Ann Walker, and Rosemary and/or Newell Alexander, Shores more than fills the bill six characters out of six, proving himself as consummate a performer as he is a writer, particularly with director Emerson Collins keeping things visually varied on elements of Pete Hickcok’s Priscilla Queen Of The Desert set, aided and abetted by Matthew Brian Denman’s subtle-to-flashy lighting design choices.

Six Characters In Search Of A Play is produced by Jay Marcus and Tom DeTrinis. Mat Hayes is associate producer. Estey DeMerchant is production stage manager.

Guaranteed to have you falling out of your seat with laughter and wiping away a tear or two along the way, Del Shores’ Six Characters In Search Of A Play adds up to just about the best way to spend a Monday or Tuesday evening in March.

Celebration Theatre at Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood.
www.celebrationtheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
February 26, 2018
Photos: Mat Hayes

Tags: Celebration Theatre, Del Shores, Los Angeles Theater Review