Sordid Lives

A black comedy about white trash! Three generations of Grandma Peggy’s outlandish family and assorted peculiar friends are brought together after she dies in a cheap motel room, having tripped over the detached wooden legs of her best friend’s husband, G.W. Nethercott, with whom she was shacked up. Her two daughters — uptight Latrelle and gaudy LaVonda — argue over whether Mama should be buried with her mink stole in such hot weather. Sissy Hickey, Mama’s sister, is having nicotine fits as she stings herself on the wrist with rubber bands to try to stop smoking amid all the stress. Ty Williamson, Latrelle’s gay actor son, reluctantly returns to the Texas town where he never felt free to be who he is, as he tells us in touching monologues. And then, introduced in Act Two, is Sissy and Peggy’s transvestite brother Earl “Brother Boy” Ingram, who has been in the state lunatic asylum for 23 years and believes he is country/western singer Tammy Wynette. He was sent there after his best friend Wardell Owens, who beat him up, found out that he was in love with him.

Adult language and situations.