If you are familiar with "Come Back to the Five & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," it's probably from the 1982 film version of Ed Graczyk's play directed by Robert Altman, and best know for introducing Cher to the world as a serious actress.
Altman also directed the play's Broadway debut (the same year), and neither, despite a star-studded cast, was a success.
Forget all that. The current production of "Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," on stage at the Hermosa Beach Playhouse through Nov. 4, is a resounding success. The cast may not boast the star-power of Cher, Karen Black, Cathy Bates and Sandy Dennis, but under the adroit, emotionally resonant direction of Stephanie Coltrin, this production touches the heart, as well as the funny bone, in ways the film does not. It's a perfect example of an ensemble cast running on all cylinders.
Set alternately in 1975 and 1955, the play takes place in the dusty all but forgotten two-lane blacktop town of McCarthy, Texas. Little more than a dried up husk, all that's left are memories, bright and dark. And the brightest was the summer when a Hollywood movie crew moved into Marfa (one town away) to shoot "Giant" starring that teen-dream rebel, James Dean.
The focal point of the play is the 20 year reunion of the "Disciples of James Dean," a giddy gaggle of girls and one girlish boy, who long ago idolized Dean and whose temple of worship was the 5 & dime. But as the action moves back and forth in time, the reunion turns out to be a moment of truth for all, where past and present snap into sharp emotional focus.
The high priestess of The Disciples is Mona, who found herself cast as an extra and ever since has proclaimed to the world that she is the mother of James Dean's only begotten son. Double cast, Kimberly Patterson plays Mona in the present with painfully believable high-strung intensity. Her star-struck teenage former self is played by Dana DeRuyck.
Sissy, the town's former resident sex bomb, is also double cast, with Jacqueline Axton all brass and banter as Sissy now, with robust Meredith Rensa as her deliciously sexy, sweater-bursting former self.
Just as the filming of "Giant" and the aura of James Dean represents a glittering fantasy, there is a dark side to McCarthy, personified by the town's misunderstanding and hatred toward an effeminate young boy, Joe, who is played in 1955 with sensitivity by Rhett Nadolny and in 1975 with real dexterity by C. Stephen Foster.
It's Joe who has undergone the greatest transformation by becoming Joanne. His goal is to hold a mirror up to the town that all but destroyed his life and get some payback.
Rounding out the cast are Sara Borgeson as loud-mouthed Stella May, whose only children are a batch of oil wells; Elisabeth Meiman as the Bible thumping owner of the 5 & dime, Juanita; and wide-eyed Edna Louise (played with comic flare by Carolyn Cannon), the happy, dim-witted, local beautician who is well on her way to her seventh child.
Played out against the colorfully detailed set design of Christopher Beyries and character defining costumes by Karen Cornejo, "Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" launches the Hermosa Beach Playhouses 10th season is fine form.
If you liked "The Last Picture Show" and "Brokeback Mountain" take a seat at the "5 & Dime." |
