COUP/CLUCKS
First produced in 1982 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Coup/Clucks depicts a day in the life of Brine, Alabama, a small town whose innate dreariness is exacerbated by a financial depression that’s driving most of its work force west in search of jobs. The two plays (which can be produced separately or together–Coup was presented on its own during last season’s Off Off Loop Theater Festival) are set on July 4–the day of the annual “Tara Parade and Ball,” a charity event to raise funds for the local Daughters of the Confederacy. But efforts to preserve this symbolic remnant of the Old South are doomed in this Dixie dump where, as one character comments, “all the good ol’ boys leave for Texas, an’ the only folks movin’ in is a colored dentist and a hairdressin’ fairy.”
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Indeed, the presence of a black doctor and a gay beautician make for an untraditional Tara Parade in Coup, the more farcical of these plays. Miz Zifty, in whose all-white antebellum home Coup is set, is a 60-ish doyenne who is proudly celebrating her 23rd year as Scarlett in the costume parade; but a Scarlett needs a Rhett, and Miz Zifty’s leading man, Travis, happens to be dead drunk. While scrounging around for a suitable stand-in, Miz Zifty and her friends exhibit a range of southern-stupid stereotypes that makes Mama’s Family look like Faulkner. Brenda Lee, the devolved debutante cast as Melanie in the parade, mourns the years that have wrinkled her once-cute cheerleader looks; her beer-swilling redneck husband Tooth guffaws like a jackass at everyone else’s problems while lounging improbably in ill-fitting Ashley Wilkes garb. Essie, Travis’s northern-educated wife, makes clumsy attempts to liberalize the proceedings by wearing blackface to impersonate Mammy–and only succeeds in infuriating both her white racist peers and the black maid Beulah, who grumps around the house challenging her employer’s Dixieland delusions. (Miz Zifty: “Slavery was simply the system of welfare benefits of that time.” Beulah: “An’ what was floggin’?” Miz Zifty: “We never flogged, we spanked.”) And fluttery Don Savanah, the “perennial bachelor” beautician, works overtime to turn the ladies into something approximating Gone With the Wind glamour while lusting after Bobby Joe, the 17-year-old shitkicker recruited to replace Travis.
On the technical side, costume designer Kevin E. Peterson’s ersatz GWTW hoopskirts and Zouave tunics are impressive. But Marlene Zuccaro’s offstage sound effects reduce gunshots and a falling car engine to the same dull, all-purpose clunk.
