NewsUpper SchoolStudent LifeServiceFine Arts
Players bring Southern comedy to campus stage
Feb 18, 2003 8:00 AM
By Stefan Eady - Faculty
The Darlington Players will present “Dearly Departed,” a southern comedy by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones, in the Zelle Drama Room on the Upper School campus, April 11, 12, and 13. Darlington Players Director David Powell, Thatcher Chair of English, got the idea to do this comedy after talking to his brother, who had been in it before and said it was hilarious. “He’s usually right,” Powell said. After reading the script, Powell described it as “laugh out loud funny.”
“Dearly Departed” takes place in the Baptist back woods of the Bible Belt and centers around the Turpin family, who proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. When the patriarch of the family dies and all of the Turpins get together, chaos breaks out in the midst of the sorrow. “Everybody’s at their best and worst at a funeral anyway,” Powell said. The combination of these hilarious characters and the eccentric community they inhabit leads to laugh after laugh.
“Dearly Departed,” described by The New York Daily News as “drop dead funny,” premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. in 1991. That same year it received great critical acclaim in its off-Broadway opening at the Second Stage Theatre in New York. “Dearly Departed” was then produced in Los Angeles where it received six Drama Logue Awards including “Best Production” and “Best Playwriting.” It was subsequently published and has been produced in hundreds of regional theaters in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The public is invited to attend.
Due to content, this play may not be suitable for children under the age of 13.
“Dearly Departed” takes place in the Baptist back woods of the Bible Belt and centers around the Turpin family, who proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. When the patriarch of the family dies and all of the Turpins get together, chaos breaks out in the midst of the sorrow. “Everybody’s at their best and worst at a funeral anyway,” Powell said. The combination of these hilarious characters and the eccentric community they inhabit leads to laugh after laugh.
“Dearly Departed,” described by The New York Daily News as “drop dead funny,” premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. in 1991. That same year it received great critical acclaim in its off-Broadway opening at the Second Stage Theatre in New York. “Dearly Departed” was then produced in Los Angeles where it received six Drama Logue Awards including “Best Production” and “Best Playwriting.” It was subsequently published and has been produced in hundreds of regional theaters in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The public is invited to attend.
Due to content, this play may not be suitable for children under the age of 13.
