Del Shores wrote and directed this popular play, filmed here before a live audience. The story begins in a church where a preacher (Newell Alexander) rails against homosexuality as Mark (Emerson Collins), a gay parishioner, imagines possible responses. As Mark tells the audience, he grew up in Texas as the son of a deacon. At Calvary Christian, Mark meets three other “sissies” like himself: Andrew (Matthew Scott Montgomery), Benny (Willam Belli), and T.J. (Luke Stratte-McClure), who follow him in sharing stories and recreating moments from their youth. When they were teenagers, Mark fell for T.J., but T.J. rejected him and renounced homosexuality. Benny, a drag performer, just wants to live life on his own terms, while Andrew is trying to reconcile his faith with his desires. Shores punctuates the narrative with conversations between mothers and sons, and mothers and the preacher. Serving as a sort of tragicomic Greek chorus, Dale Dickey and Leslie Jordan play Odette and Preston (aka “Peanut”), two former Southern Baptists who drink, smoke, and add their stories to the mix. “How did we end up like this,” Peanut wonders at one point, “old, drunk, and pitiful”? (At times, Dickey and Jordan break themselves up, but this works more often than not.) Themes that bind the observations and recollections together include shame, insecurity, and denial, although the wisecracks and some musical sequences prevent the proceedings from wallowing in the dark for too long. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)
Southern Baptist Sissies
Breaking Glass, 139 min., not rated, DVD: $21.99 Volume 30, Issue 1
Southern Baptist Sissies
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