No one writes about the sordid lives of Southern Baptist women with more vinegar-laced love and affection than Del Shores, once again delighting Zephyr Theatre audiences with his latest dramedic treat, a rib-tickling, tear-jerking Kentucky-fried feast appropriately dubbed This Side Of Crazy.

Once upon a time there were three itty-bitty Superstars For Jesus known throughout the gospel world as the Blaylock Sisters, but that was decades ago, the ensuing years having left their Country Music Legend of a mom (Sharon Garrison as Ditty Blaylock) with nothing but nostalgia, that and the ecstatic moans now emanating from the upstairs bedroom where eldest daughter Rachel (Bobbie Eakes) is once having carnal relations with hubby Jude, no matter that the man’s been in a coma these past twenty-five years.

Well, at least one of Ditty’s now 40something daughters has stuck around to take care of her septuagenarian Mama, something that unfortunately cannot be said about middle sis Abigail (Dale Dickey), twenty-five years in the loony bin, or youngest Blaylock Betthany (Rachel Sorsa), off doing her scandalous, atheist thing in some godless place about as far from Mama’s old Kentucky home as a strip-teasing, lap-dancing daughter can possibly get.

But not for long, not if Ditty’s plans to reunite her girls and “reclaim the happy times” come to fruition.

Ditty is, you see, about to be honored by Gospel Music Television with “stars far and wide” paying tribute to an icon in story and song, and that includes Amy Grant and Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood, the one and only Dolly, Sandy Patti (that is if she can get out of a prior engagement in Dallas), Shirley Caesar, said to have forgiven Ditty for a comment that got “misconstrued as racist,” and that’s just the start of the list.

There’s just one hitch, a little hiccup if you like. Ditty Blaylock has promised GMT a Blaylock Sisters reunion, and given the three siblings’ years and years of acrimonious estrangement, said get-together is going to be more easily said than done, that is unless Abigail and Bethany show up on Ditty’s doorstep for her signature on the $5000 checks they’ve each been sent.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that before long all four Blaylocks will once again find themselves under the same roof.

In other words, let the fireworks begin!

Like Shores’ most recent play (and some would say chef-d’oeuvre) Yellow, This Side Of Crazy manages to navigate the fine line between comedy and tragedy with accomplished finesse, not least because (like Yellow’s all-American Westmoreland family down in Vicksburg, Mississippi), the equally three-dimensional Blaylocks of Middlesboro, Kentucky are as authentic at eliciting laughter as they are at wringing tears.

It helps immensely that Shores is blessed this time round with four of the most fabulous actresses any writer-director could wish for, beginning with Garrison’s scrumptiously self-absorbed Ditty. (Hearing Garrison utter lines like “The living legend, Ditty Blaylock, their words, not mine, fifty years of singing and writing songs for Jesus, creator and mother of The Blaylock Sisters!” with patently false humility is worth the price of admission.)

Eakes’ powerhouse Rachel is as filled with repressed rage as she is impeccably coiffed and attired; Dickey once again stuns as a woman worn down to a shadow of her youthful self since Mama had Abigail committed some twenty-five years ago, and the divine Sorsa matches them both as the out and proud, defiantly nonbelieving Bethany, all three harmonizing to perfection under Blake McIver’s expert musical direction.

This Side Of Crazy couldn’t look more smashing than it does on Tom Buderwitz’s miraculously compacted, meticulously appointed Blaylock family home, gorgeously lit by Matthew Patrick Denman, with Shon LeBlanc’s character-perfect costumes and Drew Dalzell’s Dolly-spiced sound design completing one of the best intimate theater designs in town.

Guest artist Susan Leslie covers the role of Abigail. This Side Of Crazy’s Los Angeles Premiere is produced by Emerson Collins, Louise H. Beard, and Shores. Letitia Chang is stage manager and Saige Holst is assistant stage manager.

I first fell in love with Del Shores’ oeuvre some fourteen years ago when Sordid Lives, Southern Baptist Sissies, and The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife played in rotating rep at the Zephyr, and the love affair continues stronger than ever with This Side Of Crazy. Del’s latest dramatic-comedic gem is This Side Of Sensational.

Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.delshores.com

–Steven Stanley
January 31, 2020
Photos: Karianne Flaathen

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