What could be lovelier
and more promising than a garden wedding, especially the garden of a
Savannah mansion in May? But when the wedding guests have been sprung from
the pen of Beth Henley, the Mississippi Pulitzer Prize winning playwright
known for putting a ridiculous spin on the Old South’s tragic sensibilities,
the likelihood of that wedding coming off without a hitch is, well,
impossible. After all, the bride-to-be and her sister and mother are
typically nutty-but-nice sort of Henley women with names reeking of
magnolias and metaphors: Floral Kingsley is the flowering with life sister
of the bride. Mother is Kandall (as in keeping the candle of Southern
propriety lit) Kingsley. And Pandora Kingsley is the younger sister whose
impossibly unsuitable marriage plans set off an array of revelations and
complications.
To round out the cast of
oddball Southern charmers, we also have four men with enough quirks to match
the women. Unlike the women who are Henley variants on America’s southern
belles, the men seem to have been kidnapped from other literary pastures:
Henley’s admitted first idol, Chekhov, is clearly present in the play’s
father and son characters. The pony-tailed middle aged groom to be, Edvard
Lunt, and his emotional mess of an oldest of eight sons, Sidney. This son,
whom his father fails to recognize, has arrived at the prenuptials to
deliver a letter from his mother declaring that she will kill herself if the
wedding takes place. Edvard is more than a little upset by this missive,
but more by its miserable penmanship than its contents. Reverend Larence is
a deliciously endearing throwback to the lustful missionary in Somerset
Maugham’s Rain. Finally, there’s Floral's husband Jonsey. He’s as
gallantly attentive as Margaret Mitchell’s Tarleton twins and as sexually
unavailable to her as Ashley Wilkes, with more than a dash of some of
Tennessee Williams’ male brooders -- above all, he’s in love with his own
good looks.
If you can accept a
cluster of ugly toadstools on a gorgeously perfect lawn, as does the not
quite as proper as she seems Mrs. Kingsley, then you'll welcome what is
quite possibly one of the more enjoyable modern comedies to come down the
pike.
