Dearly Departed at Historic Fayette Theatre

July 17, 18, 24, 25, 31 and August 1, 2
Dearly Departed
Director: Timothy Runyon & Written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones
 
In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father’s funeral, the Turpin’s other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family  carl their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than two cents. As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, “When I die, don’t tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you.” Amidst the chaos, the Turpin family turns to their friends and neighbors for comfort, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of needs, and final, the funeral.