Don't Eat the Chili in "Daddy's Dyin'"...!

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that Mark Boyd knows what it’s like to be high, and when watching him on stage with Sandy VanLacker in a pig-out scene during “Daddy’s Dyin’ Who’s Got the Will?” it’s fun to observe them both let go and actually enjoy themselves. Ms. VanLacker as Marlene Turnover – married to Orville Turnover – starts a bit hyper and seems to get more and more energetic as the show goes on. She may have started out a little more beaten down in order to build herself up to a final confrontation with her very loud husband, however her perkiness and impertinence are fun to watch.

The stand-out member in the cast, with unfortunately the smallest role, is Mr. Boyd. He waltzes in with Evalita Turnover (played to the hilt of the 80s fashion sense and white trash sentiments by Jill Maddix) barefoot, sporting tattoos with a bandana covering long hair and torn jeans. In the stiff, redneck household of the Turnover residence he seems both out of place and very at home, and eventually interjects himself into the insanity of this family’s crisis – which is really about the missing will of Daddy – and leaves with a different Turnover than he comes with. He’s a hippy with a Zen sense of humor – he is happy to live and let live – to a point.

Kerry Waters plays Lurlene – the sister who leaves the family to “answer the call of God” with her husband, thus abandoning her father. Her father, played to sweet and sad success by Steve Shelton, cut her out of his will, but the family knows he’s recently changed it. There are hopes for Lurlene that he forgave her and put her back in the will – although the money in the end never really matters to Lurlene. She plays the role of a dutiful daughter – which is far different than the role of Sara Lee, played by Marni Holmes, who takes it to a higher level and becomes the loving daughter who doesn’t want to see her father die.

Ms. Holmes is convincing as the daughter who not only stays behind to care for her father and the farm, but the sister who is constantly being connived by her youngest sibling, Evalita. Pushed past her breaking point several times, Ms. Holmes reveals a poignancy with a simple phone call, and a rush to her father for comfort – he sings to her, lost in the past and believing he’s putting his baby girl to sleep, and she listens to his voice while crying on his chest as the lights go out at the end of a scene.

Her other confrontation is a bit more dramatic; she scares the hell out of Evalita and pushes her around the living room, tired of her crap, tired of her getting the way, and tired of Evalita taking away the things that she loves…Ms. Maddix goes from confident to being a bit scared from being shoved around, to bouncing back into the bitchy sister role at the end of the scene before running away from the wrath of Sara Lee. Well done, ladies.

Rick Wendorf – if you know him – is costumed in overalls and looks the part of a wife beater despite his well-known and oft’ loved diva ways. He was loud and crude, unafraid to get downright nasty with his wife, Marlene. Towards the end of the show, however, Mr. Wendorf displayed a surprisingly soft side when he asks Marlene to “just leave.” It’s a broken voice and I was touched by it. His presence tends to egg the women of the family on, and he plays dumb quite well (that is, I’m assuming he’s playing at it)…

Steve Shelton as Buford – or Daddy – was quite good with playing befuddled and living in the past, while upset about not understanding his present. While the others in the cast mostly ignore his rantings, Sara Lee takes him seriously and it’s obvious she loves him while her siblings are there for other intentions (to assuage guilt or go after his money). Mr. Shelton portrays a victim with a temper, retreating back into confusion timidly.

There are usually hiccups in a show, and in this one the real disappointment comes in the form of Marie Papciak as Mama Wheelis. She had a few moments when she remembered her lines, and they were funny when she could recall them and deliver them with a bit more speed than a turtle’s pace, however she couldn’t keep up with the rest of the cast and there were very long stretches of the show in which she elongated her speech, for some strange reason. I’m not quite sure if this was because it was her idea of how to act older than her actual age, or if it was because she was searching for her lines and thought the slower she spoke the longer it gave her to remember them. She was painful, unfortunately, to watch at times and even brought the alacrity of conversation between the rest of the cast to a dead stop as she struggled and fumbled over her words. What a shame. What should have been a show that rested just under two hours stumbled it’s way to closer to two and fifteen, and it was because the pacing was off for key scenes that should have clipped along. Except Harmony who has an even temper, everyone else has a sharp tongue and it should have showed. The speed of the dialogue should have been quick and snappy - and it was with the other characters, but when she took the stage and mixed up character names and re-started her sentences, it upset the timing and pace and frankly, was a bit irritating to watch. She should have known her lines. Period.

Tony Sump should be proud of his functional and appropriate set design, tech work and backstage crew. They all moved quickly and the sound/lights were impeccable. The costumes were likely appropriate for the kind of people we were watching; tacky, ill-fitting at times and even outrageous. I’m not typically a fan of this genre, however the night I saw the show the ponderously obvious flaw was the pacing. Some of it may have been inherent in the script, but much of it was most certainly due to actors fumbling for lines. Ms. Papciak wasn’t the only actor to grasp for words, however she was the most obvious and the most rampantly irresponsible about it. I hope for next weekend Mr. Sump can grill into his actors that they’ve got a good show – but it could be so much better by shaving off about 20 minutes and forcing it to clip along at a pace that leaves the audience forcing itself to have to keep up with the story on stage instead of wanting to shout out words to help the actors keep moving.