MORE WIRE HANGERS: Revisiting the Joan Crawford Mystique

by Robert Nesti
Edge Atlanta

For many, mention Joan Crawford and an image of a frightening, white-faced harridan brandishing a wire hanger comes immediately to mind. That image - and the classic line "No wire hangers" - comes courtesy of Mommie Dearest, the 1981 film biography of the great Hollywood star that featured Faye Dunaway in an impeccable, but near career-ending impersonation.

The source of the famous scene was taken from the tell-all biography of the same title written by Crawford’s adapted daughter Christina in 1978. It was the first and most famous of a series of biographies written by embittered progeny of famous stars who exposed their parents’ darker sides. But the question raised by both film and book is just how true was it? Was Crawford the monster her adopted daughter claimed she was or did Christina exaggerate things? At the time of the book’s publication some of Crawford’s friends came to her defense, while others acknowledged there was likely truth to Christina’s accusations.

Now Christina Darling, a new play having its premiere in Atlanta this week at the award-winning Process Theatre Company, explores the Crawford myth: what made Crawford the complicated individual she was and what led her to a disastrous attempt at motherhood? It is the brainchild of Atlanta-based actor/playwright Topher Payne, whose previous work includes Entertaining Lesbians and Beached Walls (2002); Relations Unknown (2003); Bad Mama (2005); and Above the Fold (2008), which won Payne a Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Award for Best Play. This play marks his tenth to premiere in Atlanta. He also authored a column, Necessary Luxuries, that appeared weekly in David Magazine for five years. A compilation was released in 2008 and is available in hardcover and paperback.

With the production, which continues through May 8, 2010, Payne is reunited with director DeWayne Morgan, with whom he most recently worked on Above the Fold. Morgan took over as Artistic Director of the Process Theatre Company in 2001.

EDGE recently spoke with both Morgan and Payne about how the play came about, whether Joan got a bad rap from Christina, the nature of camp and their favorite Joan Crawford movies.

De Wayne Morgan :: Is it high camp?

EDGE: How did the play come your way?

DeWayne Morgan: Actually Topher and I discussed the concept back in 2003/2004. At first I wanted him to write a parody of the movie, which is actually what the first draft was more like We workshopped it in 2004/2005, then never produced it. Then last year I approached Topher about bringing it back out of the closest, so to speak, and we ended up with the draft we have now.

EDGE: What did you like about it that made you want to produce it?

DeWayne Morgan: I always loved Mommie Dearest, I am gay what can I say! However the movie is so one-sided and makes Joan the villain. It only gives one side of the story. Christina Darling of course if fictionalized version of what might have happened; but it explores Joan and where she came from, her as Lucille Fay LeSueur, which was her named before it was changed to Joan. Here Joan’s mother is introduced. So, we get to the history of what helped shaped Joan and, eventually, Christina.

EDGE: How would you describe it? Considering it has both Christina and Joan Crawford in it, is it high camp?

DeWayne Morgan: Not at all. It has its moments of camp, but the play tries to show who these women really are and tries to help you understand what created them.

EDGE: What is the key to directing parodies, such as the ones by Charles Busch that this show appears to be in the style of?

DeWayne Morgan: I think finding the blend of when to have those real true moments and when to give the audience what they want. For example Topher and I struggled the ’No wire hangers’ scene. At first it was just going to be Christina telling the story to her headmistress Ms. Chadwick when she woke up from a nightmare. But in the end we decided to go with Joan recreating the movie version as Christina tells the story.

EDGE: Why is there still such a fascination with Joan Crawford?

DeWayne Morgan: She is everything all of us secretly want to be, strong, beautiful and she didn’t take crap from anyone! ("Don’t fuck with me, fellas!") She was fabulous. She had a drink in one hand and cigarette in the other and she always looked flawless.

EDGE: Do you have a favorite Crawford film?

DeWayne Morgan: Mildred Pierce

EDGE: Did Joan Crawford get a bad rap from Christina?

DeWayne Morgan: I really don’t know. I think some of what she said was true. Then I think maybe she embellished some things. I know for a fact that the movie did. Christina Crawford hated the movie because it was over the top and took a lot of things to extreme.

EDGE: You’ve worked with Topher Payne before - how would you describe your working relationship?

DeWayne Morgan: I would say "It’s one hell of a match," to quote Joan herself. We work very well together and have learned to trust each other over the years. I think this is our fifth play together and they only keep getting better and better. Last year Above the Fold that Topher wrote and I directed for The Process Theatre won best all around show for 2009 at the Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Award. So, we have a lot to live up to.

Topher Payne :: High camp? Nobody told me

EDGE: How did you come up with the idea of the play?

Topher Payne: I have a little recipe box I keep on my desk, and any time I have an idea I don’t quite know what to do with, I just jot it down and toss it in there. At some point after seeing Mommie Dearest for the umpteenth time, I wrote down a line for Joan Crawford: "Hello, Christina Darling. I read your book." I became enamored with the idea of Joan having a chance to give her perspective on things. The resulting research introduced me to Joan’s relationship with her mother, Anna, and I realized this is truly the whole family’s story.

EDGE: Is the play high camp? If so, how do you keep it real?

Topher Payne: If it is high camp, nobody’s told me, which is probably best. It’s definitely larger than life, by nature of the lives we’re experiencing. Nobody in this story feels anything small - everything is enormous to them. But the art of camp, I’m thinking Joan’s films from the 60s, or the works of Charles Busch, lies in its sincerity. If you play it broad, it rings false. You have to accept entirely that this is the world they inhabit. I guess camp is in the eye of the beholder.

EDGE: Who have been your influences as a playwright?

Topher Payne: Beth Henley, for sure. Paul Rudnick can write a one-liner better than anyone. I love Charles Busch’s range as an artist. Steve Yockey makes me want to take more risks. And Tyler Perry reminds me that the measure of success lies in the audiences you do manage to reach, not the ones you don’t.

EDGE: What do you like about Joan Crawford?

Topher Payne: I like her focus. I like her willingness and ability to adapt. I think she was a damn fine actress. And she looked great in hats. But she shouldn’t have raised children. Just dogs. Dogs were better suited to her expectations.

EDGE: Did she get a bad rap from Christina?

Topher Payne: I wish Christina had waited a few more years to write the book. She was still so close to the event of her relationship with her mother that I don’t think she was capable of approaching it with any degree of perspective. I don’t think Christina’s a bad person- I think she sought validation from the public because that’s what she was taught matters.

EDGE: What do you think of ’Mommie Dearest?’

Topher Payne: The book? It has its moments. Her follow-up, "Survivor," is significantly better. The film? Jesus, that script is a piece of shit. It’s a random series of events without cause or motive. The filmmakers never once question why anything happens, it’s just a horrible fact, like a tsunami. Which is a real shame, because Dunaway and Scarwid were capable of infinitely more, given half the chance.

EDGE: You play Joan in your play. How did you arrive at your characterization? Did you watch a lot of her movies?

Topher Payne: Oh, you’re asking me that on a bad day. I’ve been knitting and dancing all afternoon, trying to master both. It’s absolutely the hardest work I’ve ever done, finding her poise, her stillness, because I’m a big loud goofball in daily life. I look, sound, and move nothing like Joan. But I studied her, both in interviews and in films, to find the difference between the woman and the performer. Then I worked with Kristin Kalbli, who plays young Joan, to find our common body language. She’s so graceful and lovely, I stole a bunch of good stuff from her.

EDGE: Do you have a favorite Crawford film?

Topher Payne: Sudden Fear. Great flick, and quintessential Crawford. On the other hand, Strange Cargo, with Gable, is the least affected performance she gave in a talkie. It holds up with the best contemporary performances.

EDGE: Christina Crawford did have a stroke, but it was sometime after her book was published. Why did you incorporate it in your play?

Topher Payne: The stroke happens in the play as it did in life, in the summer of 1981. Those synapses start firing off in unexpected ways, and Christina’s life flashes before her eyes, but it’s all a little... off. Between the MGM press releases, the book, the movie, the magazine stories, she realizes she can’t trust her own memory. So her late grandmother comes in as a tour guide to help her clear things up a bit.

EDGE: Have you been in touch with Christina Crawford?

Topher Payne: I didn’t feel the need - I’m not presenting any of this as fact, just a fascinating "What if?" scenario. Christina’s told her version of events plenty of times over the years. But she’s doing very well these days. She’s a county commissioner in Idaho, and she hosts a public access show that’s, well... how to put this? Remember what I said about what makes good camp?

EDGE: This is the first time you are acting in a play you have written - what has that been like?

Topher Payne: Stupid hard. When I wrote it, I wasn’t picturing me, I was picturing Joan. As an actor, I want to honor that as much as I possibly can. I can’t say unequivocally I was the absolute perfect person for the role- that would be Charles Busch, I suppose - but I know no one would ever work harder than me to get it right. Whether I succeed, we’ll find out soon enough.

EDGE: How would you describe your relationship with DeWayne?

Topher Payne: You know how you work with someone for so long, you start thinking alike? Yeah, we don’t do that at all. Instead, we are able to anticipate what the other is going to think, and why we vehemently disagree with it. I argue with that man better than anyone I know, and it’s that level of commitment we both bring to the table, finding a way to reconcile our individual perspectives, which results in a beautiful collaboration. We respect each other a whole heck of a lot, and he loves new plays.

EDGE: If you could meet Joan Crawford, what would you ask her?

Topher Payne: I would ask her nothing. I’d just pour her a vodka and Pepsi, hand her the script, and wait for her notes.

"Designing Women LIVE" Play Relives Classic TV Fave

by Jim Farmer
Project Q Atlanta

Gay men longing for a return of Julia, Suzanne, Mary Jo and Charlene get a chance to see a live version of “Designing Women” on Wednesday and Thursday, with one great twist—the major performers are all male.

DeWayne Morgan, Topher Payne and their gang with Process Theatre Company are back in drag for “Designing Women LIVE”—which features actual scripts from the TV show—after last year’s successful “The Golden Girls LIVE” fundraiser, which raised money for AID Atlanta.

The success of the 2009 event encouraged the cast to stay in dresses, only as a different set of popular characters. The “Designing Women” fundraiser benefits Process Theatre, and the group is reserving future “Golden Girls” shows to be specifically associated with AID Atlanta fundraising.

“The response to the ‘Golden Girls LIVE’ fundraiser for AID Atlanta exceeded everything we expected,” Payne says. “We didn’t want to confuse the audience base and the charity program by doing ‘Golden Girls’ this time, so we’ll reserve that for AID Atlanta, and ‘Designing Women’ will directly benefit Process Theatre.”

The shows are a great way to introduce the theater experience to a new audience that doesn’t regularly attend stage plays, he says.

“People who aren’t as willing to come to a play might come to see what we do with this fun show, and some of those may come back to see a legitimate world premiere,” Payne says. “It gets people in the habit of and comfortable with the idea of enjoying a night at the theater.”

Process will debut playwright Payne’s latest work this spring.

Morgan, the artistic director of Process Theatre, says that the “Designing Women LIVE” cast is full of gay men. He stars as Suzanne Sugarbaker, and Payne stars as the older and wiser sister Julia Sugarbaker.

The rest of the cast includes Greg Morris as Mary Jo Shively; Joey Ellington as Charlene Stillfield; and Spencer Stephens as Anthony Bouvier. Actress Jill Hames—who played Little Edie in the recent “Grey Gardens” production at Actor’s Express—plays the kooky Bernice Clifton.

Morgan feels that the ensemble works well together, but he says Hames might steal the show as Bernice.

“She is the most dead-on of all of us,” Morgan says. “At our first rehearsal, we could not stop laughing.”

Payne agrees: “She’s eerily accurate.”

The two episodes that the group is adapting for the stage are “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend,” in which Suzanne deals with a beauty queen friend who has come out of the closet, and “Bernice’s Sanity Hearing,” in which Bernice’s mental stability is called into question.

Neither episode is available on DVD, so it should be fun to revisit shows that haven’t been available for years. The cast also decided to weave some classic moments from other episodes into the stage script, so the patched-in “Best Of” monologues and one-liners make the material extra fresh. Payne incorporates Julia’s famous “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” monologue into one skit, for example.

“[‘Designing Women’] is so loved and well known, especially in Atlanta,” Payne says. “I have never felt such an obligation to get every word and inflection perfect.”

Morgan says that, like “The Golden Girls,” “Designing Women” attracted a lot of gay viewers, and that he himself was a huge fan of the show.

“What’s not to love,” he says. “You have an ex beauty queen that all gay men can relate to, as well as a Joan Crawford like character in Julia. These four women are just the greatest combination. And the fashions are great.”

Morgan remembers that “Designing Women” and “The Golden Girls” had a lot in common. “Both had four women, some larger than life, and each had a gay episode and an episode dealing with AIDS,” he says. “But despite similarities, each was its own show.”

To prepare, Morgan has been watching the “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend” episode over and over to get Suzanne’s mannerisms and movement.

“It’s a lot of fun (playing her),” he says. “I loved her as a kid. She tells it like it is and spares no one.”

What’s next for this lively crew of performers? Payne hints that “Bewitched” is on the table for a benefit show, but in the expect-the-unexpected world these guys live in, anything is possible.

The Process Theatre Company’s “Designing Women LIVE” runs at Onstage Atlanta Wednesday, Feb. 24 and Thursday, Feb. 25. Online tickets are available, or call 404-245-4205. And hurry, Wednesday’s performance was almost sold out as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Life Aquatic

A Craigslist ad for a no-strings hookup leads to an apocalyptic dilemma in boom

by Curt Holman
Creative Loafing

Aurora Theatre’s comedy boom gives new meaning to the expression “I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last person Earth.” Directed by Joe Gfaller, boom begins with an unimaginably lousy date that somehow manages only to get worse.

Jo (Eve Krueger), a young journalism student, responds to a Craigslist ad promising a no-strings-attached hookup. Meek marine biologist Jules (Topher Payne), who placed the ad, shies away from Jo’s sexual aggressiveness, and eventually reveals that he’s both gay and a virgin. When Jo asks how he knows he’s gay if he’s never been with anyone, Jules replies, “The non-randomness of the erections.”

Nodding to the aquarium in his underground lab, Jules explains that his examination of fish behavior patterns has convinced him that a cataclysmic event is nigh. He and Jo could end up as the last two people on Earth, although Jo accuses him of engineering a “Cormac McCarthy meets Road Warrior meets 'Survivor'” fantasy. Krueger and Payne prove well-cast as the mismatched couple, but the comedic action doesn’t quite crackle in the play’s initial section, which unfolds like a “Kids in the Hall” sketch.

Meanwhile, in a corner of the performance space, a woman with the name tag “Barbara” (Shelly McCook) plays a massive drum and operates peculiar controls during key moments. A cheerful tour-guide type, Barbara addresses the audience with increasing frequency, until her personal subplot rivals Jo and Jules' relationship. McCook may have been born to play quirky, chipper roles that call for physical humor, and she winningly captures Barbara’s habit of miming words that she can’t speak aloud.

I won’t spoil whether Barbara is really “there” or not, but as her minidrama interweaves with Jo and Jules’ increasingly outlandish predicament, boom touches on much deeper emotions than you’d expect from the play's beginning. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play inaugurates both Aurora’s smaller performing space and Georgia Gwinnett College Lab Series and promises to bring intriguing, adventurous new plays to Lawrenceville. By the end, boom approaches the good-natured satire of the late, beloved Douglas Adams, and offers a new spin on Adams’ catchphrase, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

"Greater Tuna" Spoofs Small-Town America

By L. Pierce Carson

The Napa Valley Register

A simple party skit nearly three decades ago blossomed into a critically acclaimed comedy that’s been staged in theaters all over the world — even a command performance at the White House.“Greater Tuna” is a delightfully devilish satire on life in rural America created by Oklahoma natives Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard, who also served as its original director.

Two actors play more than two dozen characters — including men, women, children and animals — who inhabit Tuna, “the third smallest town in Texas,” where the Lions Club is far too liberal and Patsy Cline hits are heard nonstop on radio station OKKK. The two-act, two-hour comedy begins with a radio report on the death of Judge Roscoe Buckner from an apparent stroke while wearing a 1950 turquoise Dale Evans one-piece swimsuit with “lots of cowgirl fringe,” and draws audiences in as it provides a fascinating look at outrageous small-town inhabitants, along with non-stop laughs.
The show began in the early ’80s as a party skit the trio created based on a political cartoon. Early tour dates found an instant audience coast to coast, as the show played to packed houses in San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston and Hartford before Sears and Williams found themselves performing “Greater Tuna” for more than a year Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre.That led to an HBO special produced by Norman Lear, which took the “Greater Tuna” phenomenon to every city in America.

Sears and Williams eventually took the show to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and a pair of command performances at the White House for President and Mrs. George H. W. Bush in 1990 and ’91.The popularity crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1988 as the highlight of Scotland’s famed Edinburgh Festival, while San Francisco’s Marines Memorial Theatre saw a record-breaking seven-year run.Audiences liked “Greater Tuna” so much that Sears and Williams have written three sequels, which are all playing somewhere in the country at present.

“Greater Tuna” finally showed up in wine country last weekend, in the capable hands of a pair of talented southerners, Jef Holbrook (Georgia) and Topher Payne (Mississippi). Sunday afternoon’s performance at Yountville’s Lincoln Theater was the final stop on a seven-month-long coast-to-coast tour. Seeing someone other than Sears and Williams inhabit the characters they created was indeed enlightening — to see that they’d drawn such larger-than-life caricatures that others could build on.

Although I’d seen the savvy Oklahomans send audiences into fits of laughter on numerous occasions, there were moments when I actually thought the weekend visitors were able to breathe added life into their respective roles. This is not an easy show to do as both men are often required to walk off stage and reappear in a matter of seconds as someone new, wearing a completely different set of clothes.

The two-member cast launches its small-town tale with radio announcers Thurston Wheelis (Holbrook) and Arlis Streuve (Payne), roles to which they return throughout the show.But they also introduce us to the Bumiller family — Holbrook as the well-intentioned mother, Bertha, and Payne playing the roles of the three children — twins Stanley (a reform school alum) and Charlene (a cheerleader reject) and Jody, who willingly takes home all the stray dogs offered to him by the director of the humane society.

Holbrook also does a star turn as Aunt Pearl Burriss, who runs a one-woman campaign against chicken-killing dogs with her “bitter pills” (read poison) until she accidentally kills her husband’s prize bird dog.The list of characters includes a klansman, staunch weatherman, UFO spotter, and the vice president of the Smut Snatchers of the New Order, a fashionista named Vera Carp. I feel Payne made this character even more bizarre than the actor who created the role.

A moderately sized crowd, offered a cool auditorium on a hot afternoon, seemed to really enjoy this marvelous satire of small town Americana. Holbrook and Payne did the show’s authors proud.

Men in Dresses

Small-town humor provokes big laughter with two-man tour de farce 'Greater Tuna'

by Lily Dayton

Monterey County Herald

Y'all are invited to the small town in the big state where people owe more money on their tractors than on their cars and where the four seasons are known as almost summer, summer, still summer and hunting season.
The comedy show "Greater Tuna" will be featured at the Golden State Theatre in downtown Monterey tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 p.m.
This production, presented by Artbeat, features the two actors and quick-change artists Jef Holbrook and Topher Payne portraying 22 different characters through a series of rapid-fire costume changes. All of these changes will take place in less than 10 seconds.
Ed Howard, one of the three original writers of this comedy as well as the director of its Broadway production, is directing the show that will appear tonight in Monterey.
Howard and his friends Jaston Williams and Joe Sears wrote this comedy in 1981. It quickly became a cult favorite in Austin, then moved on to the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and an extended run at Circle in the Square on Broadway in New York.
Described as "deliriously funny" by Alan Ulrich from the San Francisco Examiner, the story takes place in the (fictional) third-smallest town in West Texas.
It's a typical day in town until the local judge is found dead in a woman's one-piece swimsuit. This starts a chain of events that interrupts all of the characters' lives, creating havoc, mishaps and loads of laughter.
When asked what makes this show so tremendously funny, actor Holbrook's immediate response was "Men in dresses."
Fellow actor Payne followed this up with, "What makes this show funny is that small towns are small towns wherever you go. Every town has its own local busybody, the woman older than Egypt who everyone's terrified of and the local delinquent often discussed at the dinner table. The humor comes from the identification. And then of course there are the men in dresses."
These two actors have a playful camaraderie between them, so it comes as a surprise that they didn't know each other before they started their first "Tuna" tour last February.
"We met at the first rehearsal," said Holbrook. "We had two weeks to put the show on and we just took off like old friends. Now it's hard to imagine doing this show with anyone else."
Holbrook commented that the rehearsal process was a challenge for the two of them with roughly a dozen characters a piece — two hours of material for only two actors; but he said that the quick character changes have become second nature to them both during the show.
To help with the quick-change process psychologically, they each have their own tricks.
"Jeff has his whole dressing room routine, but my biggest trick is looking at what shoes I'm wearing," said Payne.
Holbrook described his dressing room routine. "I sit in the dressing room and listen to music that makes me happy. Tom Petty or the Wallflowers or basically any good, twangy acoustic music that makes me think of Texas. The music relaxes me — it's Pavlovian. If you go on stage all tense, you're dead."
"Almost all the costume changes happen off-stage," said Payne. "We have two amazing dressers back stage that work twice as hard as we do. It's an absolutely full change — for example, going from a reverend in a full suit with a wig and a moustache, then walking on stage as a sheriff with a gun, holster, sunglasses and hat."
Though Holbrook considers himself an actor before a comedian, he's very comfortable in a comedic role because he's previously acted in many comedy shows (including the film "Morris the Cat").
"I think stand-up would be fun, but I've never done it," he said. "I love acting — and comedies are fun."
Payne considers himself a writer who acts. "I primarily work as a playwright and I just finished my first book — a memoir of my mid-20s, "Necessary Luxuries." During this time, I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment three times. Then, after the last treatment, I took off with just a suitcase and traveled to Scotland. The book takes off when I return to America with nothing but my suitcase."
He credits the life-changing experience of cancer diagnosis and the subsequent roller coaster of treatment as giving him a new lease on life. "This gave me a new appreciation for taking risks and seizing opportunities that are out there, being aware of what you can live without. This tour is an extension of that experience. (Before cancer treatment) I never would have set everything aside and jumped into a 16-passenger van."
Payne said that the humor in "Greater Tuna" is appropriate for adults and older children.
"Not that there is any material that would be inappropriate for young kids, but the comedy is geared toward 12 and up. Still, we have had 8 or 10-year-olds in the audience that were cracking up."

"Tuna" Just As Funny As a Jerk In the Knee

by Scott Whited

The Pueblo Chieftain

Is it more enlightened to laugh at people, or to laugh with people? The audience at "Greater Tuna," the season finale for the Center Stage Performing Arts Series on Saturday night, didn't have to concern themselves too much with that question. They got to laugh both with people - their fellow seat-sitters at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center, and at people - the hapless inhabitants of Greater Tuna, the setting of the play described in the program as the "third smallest town in Texas."

It's late summer 1981, and the folks of Tuna are small- and narrow-minded, perfect fodder for laugh-inducing jabs by playwrights Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard (who also directed). A record-burning is in the offing, but listeners of omnipresent radio station OKKK are told not to worry: pompadoured Little Richard is going to hell, but hip-swiveling Elvis up in heaven because he's a good ol' country boy at heart.

This play is a favorite for both touring and ambitious local companies, mainly because of its primary theatrical device: Its 20-character cast is played by two virtuoso actors. This attracts actors because of the challenge and producers because of the reduced cost. Pueblo has, in fact, seen a number of versions over the last decade or two. People love to laugh (just ask Ed Wynn in "Mary Poppins") and "Greater Tuna" provides plenty of laughs.

The two-man cast in this production featured two Georgians, Columbus-bred Jef Holbrook and Atlanta-based Topher Payne. Both were talented clowns, milking their characters for all the broad comedy they could. Heck, with so many yokel Texas twangs on display, they were halfway home. We all know that hicks and rubes are funny by definition, right?

A fine example was Holbrook's R.R. Snavely, a besotted local who played an imaginary violin while trying to figure out whether he had or had not seen a UFO (short for "Unidentified Flying Object," OKKK repeatedly clarifies for its audience), shaped like a chalupa. Payne depicted many a goofy laugh-inducer, especially the holier-than-thou Vera Carp, whose sleep-excused show-stopper was splaying her beskirted legs indelicately in the crowd's collective face. Happily shocked chortles filled the auditorium.

There were occasional nods in the direction of empathy for the hicks. Holbrook's big-hair housewife Bertha Bumiller does her best with her oddball brood, but betraying husband Hank (also played by Holbrook) leaves her soothing her pain with the country Dr. Phil: Patsy Cline singing her ode to eternal love, "Always." Animal-lover Petey Fisk (Payne) beseeches a Lord he's not sure is out there, "If you did create all this, we could sure use some help taking care of it."

"Greater Tuna" takes sure aim at our funnybones. But the comedic response is similar to that of a knee's jerk in response to a tap by a physician. We know these situations, accents, and characters are supposed to be funny, so we laugh as a reflex, almost without thinking.

Upon reflection, however, there is a mean-spirited quality to the humor. These people are provincial, not terribly well-educated, and biased in favor of their own experiences and habits. They deserve to be laughed at, right?As Vera Carp says to a fellow viewer visiting the town's funeral home to pay respects to a male "hanging judge" who's been found dead of a seeming stroke while wearing a Dale Evans swimsuit, "Glass houses."

Glass houses, indeed.

A Bookless Signing

by Richard Eldredge

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Leave it to inimitable Atlanta columnist and playwright Topher Payne to stage a first during Thursday night’s book signing at Wordsmith’s in Decatur.

“What’s that saying about when life gives you lemons?” Payne explained to Buzz. “I’m considering it the ultimate going green book signing.”

Payne’s in-store event for “Necessary Luxuries,” a new collection of his popular David magazine columns, had to soldier on without the actual books Thursday, because of an error in shipping from his publisher.

Instead, Payne read selections and took advance orders for future books. Local act the Wayne Fishell Experiment banged out some original tunes for attendees.

Thankfully, Payne is having better luck with the infinite supplies of the audio version of the tome, which is raking in some nice coin for the author via customer downloads on iTunes.