Dearly Departed - A Huge Success
SYRACUSE POST STANDARD Laughter and tears mark Oswego Players return to stage (Review) Updated 8:50 AM; Today 8:50 AM By Linda Loomis When the wife of Bud Turpin wants the epitaph “Mean and Surly” engraved on his headstone, audience members know for sure they are embroiled in a classic farce, one that has landed on community theater stages since the 1990s. Director Paul McKinney draws heavily on the magnified emotion and visual humor in David Bottrel and Jessie Jones’s “Dearly Departed” to elicit nearly constant laughter from the audience at Oswego Players’ first post-quarantine production. In a series of 17 entwined vignettes played out from the moment the Turpin family patriarch falls dead at breakfast to his unsettling funeral, the audience meets his dysfunctional family: his long-suffering wife Raynelle, played by the troupe’s president, Tammy Thompson, and his sons, the alcoholic Ray-Bud, Eric Cronk, and failed entrepreneur Junior, Joshua DeLorenzo. Their much-younger Goth sister, Delightful, played by Alex Taylor, turns out to be a scene stealer despite her minimal dialogue. Her insouciance, her angst, and her distain burn through her downcast eyes as she compulsively gobbles chips and popcorn from a dollar store bag she carries everywhere, disrupting even her father’s wake with the rattling of cellophane and crunching of food, including bits she picks up from the floor where it has scattered. The deceased’s aggressively Christian sister Marguerite, Beverly Murtha, fills the house with her suppressed anger, delivering every line and Scripture verse with gritted teeth and scorching fire. Her son Royce, Matthew Fleming, is the stereotypical never-will-grow-up lazy boy with a kind heart. Among the cast of 14 comedic players, each of which is an exaggerated caricature of a Bible-belt resident, the wives of Junior and Ray-Bud play pivotal roles. Jennifer Waugh, as Lucille, provides a steadying influence as she assumes responsibility for arrangements after her father-in-law’s death. Her life is tempered by underlying sadness for a long series of miscarriages and, in an especially poignant line, she tells Ray-Bud his father had been kind to her. “He always said, ‘Better luck next time,’” she says. Lucille survives her losses by hanging on to hope and downing “nerve pills,” which she readily shares with her sister-in-law Suzanne, Gina Wentworth. Wentworth has to dig deep to find the benevolence in her character, who is first seen as an enraged mom driving to the family home with her unfaithful husband and misbehaving children. Suzanne’s threats to abandon the kids on the roadside don’t leave much room for sympathy. But, Wentworth--who holds back nothing and willingly makes an outlandish spectacle of herself as she inhabits the role--rises above Suzanne’s deficits. Her redeeming moment comes at Bud’s funeral, when she stands at his casket to sing, in a clear a capella soprano, “In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.” The funeral provides resolution for most Turpin conflicts, but the audience is left with certainty that this quirky family’s bickering won’t be buried with Bud. Their landline telephones will be buzzing with gossip and they’ll be complaining about the high price of Kentucky fried chicken and corn dogs until, one by one, each of them comes to eternal rest. The comedy in this show arises from the writers’ embellished back-country stereotypes; the laughter comes at the expense of human vulnerabilities--an aging former beauty queen who can’t let go of her one claim to fame, a woman who measures her value from the care she provides to her multi-afflicted husband, or a pastor who heartily resents the time he must devote to his flock. Some of the humor feels contrived, but, on preview night, the tears from many viewers and cast members were genuine. They flowed from empathy for the parents of Patrick Carman, a beloved Central New York performer to whose memory the production is dedicated. McKinney told the audience that Carman had been cast in the role of Reverend Hooker, but he never got to play it because two weeks before opening night, Covid-19 forced all theaters to go dark. Carman died at age 26 before rehearsals resumed. “Last July, we lost our friend Patrick Carman, a true angel on earth,” McKinney said. “This kid exuded joy. He loved the theater, and he loved everyone he met.” McKinney explained that the troupe has created the Patrick Carman Joyful Heart Theater Scholarship to perpetuate his memory, and the cast presented his mother, Colleen, with a bouquet of red roses at the final curtain. She got to play a surprise cameo near the end of the show, and even her husband, Kevin, seemed astonished. A variety of gifts and grants to the company, founded in the 1930s, have been used to increase safety and comfort--including new seating--in the Fort Ontario building that is home to the players and the Oswego Art Guild. Limited seating and pandemic health protocols are in place.