Growing up gay in the Deep South is no picnic for the protagonist of Jiggs Burgess’s laugh-out-loud funny, get-out-the-Kleenex moving The Red Suitcase, a P3 Theatre Company World Premiere at the Broadwater Mainstage.

Emerson Collins stars as Pogue (rhymes with vogue), whose life we follow from the moment his mother April (Kristen McCullough) gives birth to a seemingly stillborn baby, then hears him take his first, thoroughly unexpected breath when accidentally dropped on his noggin by a well-meaning nurse.

Next up is a childhood that could give Oliver Twist or David Copperfield a run for their money in misery, in Pogue’s case inflicted by his tough-as-nails father Bud (Bruce Melena) and his older brother/tormentor Sam (Tiago Santos), a boyhood whose only saving grace is the loving embrace of Grandmother Evans (Charlotte Louise White) and the nurturing care of father figure Martín (Santos), the undocumented Mexican who works for Bud, Pogue’s mother being too under her husband’s thumb to stand up for her younger boy.

With Daddy’s belt never far from Pogue’s rump and a schoolteacher (Pam Trotter as Mrs. Prig) every bit as eager to chastise and name-call her least favorite student as Bud is to give his boy a whoopin’ (and with Martín back in Mexico, this time for good), Pogue’s sole comforts are his pet pooch Sparky and fellow sissy boy classmate Charlie (Mat Hayes), whose arrival in Miss Prig’s fifth-grade class soon sets our young hero’s aflutter.

Still, if there’s anything life keeps teaching Pogue, it’s that nothing good lasts long, let alone forever.

The very first Best Play Winner in the Del Shores Foundation Writers Search, The Red Suitcase’s World Premiere benefits enormously from Shores’ incisive direction. (If anyone knows anything about Southern Baptist Sissies, it’s Del Shores.)

The instantly likable Collins proves a charismatic, commanding stage presence in a star turn that has the Shores staple deftly taking Pogue from precocious child to lovestruck preteen to angry, bitter young adult and beyond.

McCollough, so memorable in Shores’ Yellow, isn’t given nearly enough to do as April, but even in her brief scenes, she shines.

White is so authentic as Pogue’s endlessly loving Grandmother Evans, you’d swear she’d just gotten off a bus from rural Texas, and just wait until the stage vet sinks her teeth into a humdinger of a confrontation with her redneck son Bud, a role the sensational Melena plays with such hard-hearted malevolence in his early scenes you’d think he was beyond redemption. (Spoiler alert: He isn’t, which is one reason his performance proves so moving and The Red Suitcase so transformative.)

Completing the cast to versatile perfection is its Greek Chorus of three: Trotter (as warm and winning as a caregiving nurse and Pogue’s ever so sweet Aunt June as she is evil incarnate as Miss Prig and nutty as a fruitcake as “old widder woman” Rosella Barnes); Hayes (who aces Pogue’s terrorizing Uncle Doo Doo and a hard-ass Texas sheriff in addition to the gleefully girlish Charlie); and Santos (who’s not only wonderful as the salt-of-the-earth Martín and Pogue’s hateful bully of an older bro but also a hoot as the scotch-chugging, chain-smoking Doctor who delivers Pogue).

Though I’m not all that crazy about the lackluster title Burgess has settled on for his play, it does fit the suitcase motif of scenic designer Jesus Hurtado’s valise-packed set, props that serve multiple unexpected functions throughout the show, and Hurtado’s projection design is every bit as imaginative.

Adding to the production’s impact are Shon LeBlanc’s spot-on costume designs, Frank McKown’s expert lighting, Adam Matthew’s evocative sound design, and Krys Fehervari’s just-right hair, makeup, and properties design. (Bonus points to Fehervari for puppet Sparky, a wonder of ingenuity and sheer adorableness.)

The Red Suitcase is produced by Jon Peterson and features additional staging by assistant director Blake McIver Ewing. Anna Kupershmidt is stage manager. Fehervari is co-producer. David Elzer is publicist.

Reminiscent of The World According To Garp (but with a gay Texas spin), Jiggs Burgess’s The Red Suitcase is every bit as touching and uplifting as it is entertaining. Del Shores himself couldn’t have written it better.

Broadwater Mainstage Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles.
www.p3theatre.biz

–Steven Stanley
August 12, 2023
Photos: Dlugolecki Photography

Tags: Del Shores, Jiggs Burgess, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Broadwater Mainstage