Playwright: Beth Henley
At: The Artistic Home,
1420 W. Irving Park
Phone: (773) 404-1100; $18-$20
Runs through: Dec. 21
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I
f you want to escape a reputation as a small-town floozy and have the option of leaving that same small southern berg in "a blaze of glory," there's only one way to go: win the annual Miss Firecracker Contest, held every Fourth of July on the town fairgrounds. At least this is the truth Carnelle Scott (D. Jenna Wasmuth) believes, as she makes a last-ditch attempt to gain the respect of the townsfolk who have labeled her with the moniker, Miss Hot Tamale. In order to triumph, Carnelle puts on her tap shoes, has some All-American costumes sewn by the kind, bumbling, and hopelessly nearsighted Popeye Jackson (Georgann Charuhas), and elicits the advice of her cousin Elain (Katherine O'Neill) a former Miss Firecracker herself. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty. Small towns, we learn, aren't as forgiving or as quick to forget as Carnelle might have believed, no matter that her talent includes twirling sparklers and the shooting off of Roman candles as she tap dances her heart out to The Star Spangled Banner. Throw into the mix the fact that Carnelle's relatives have arrived days before the contest with a boatload full of problems. Elain has just left her husband and two children. Delmount (Peter Fitzsimmons) is a bitter, frustrated young man bent on selling the family home and all its belongings right out from under Carnelle. And then there's the reappearance of one of Carnelle's many "loves," Mac Sam, still wearing the syphilis Carnelle gave him like a badge of courage.
Beth Henley is a playwright with a firm hand on the pulse of what makes the south so gothic and so funny. Henley has an astonishing ear for dialogue, a gift for pacing, a knack for humor, and an unmatched talent for storytelling that make The Miss Firecracker Contest an engaging and heartfelt script.
But picking a great script does not necessarily translate to a production that works.
Luckily for us, the tiny Artistic Home is up to the task of bringing Henley's neo-gothic farce to rousing life. Working with limited resources in a tiny space, director John Mossman makes this version of Miss Firecracker sing with crisp pacing, great comic timing, and a feel for the humanity of his outlandish cast of characters, so we laugh with them rather than at them. Mossman has assembled a fine ensemble here, particularly the two women at the heart of the play: D. Jenna Wasmuth and Georgann Charuhas, who create fully realized sympathetic comic characters about whom we can really feel.
There's plenty of bad storefront theater in Chicago. Artistic Home proves, again and again, that small resources do not have to translate to small talent. In everything I've seen by this ambitious little company, they substitute imagination, taste, and a huge talent for what they might lack in budget.
And The Miss Firecracker Contest is no exception.
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