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That Sordid Little Story
The central figure in this new “bluegrass musical,” Billy Lomax (Patriac Coakley), ambles picaresquely through the South collecting misadventures as he tries to track down the rootsy band whose odd name gives the piece its title. As Billy flees the scene of his lover’s murder at the hands of her jealous brother, lectures a black man on the ethics of passing and blithely usurps the legal parentage of his Mexican coworker’s child, one might get the impression that the play is intended as satire: Our clueless hero remains narcissistically focused on the question of his own identity, oblivious to the wreckage he leaves behind. (And if you squint right, such a reading would also make sense of the otherwise ludicrous reveal at the end.) But at least in its inaugural production, which appears to have franchised the House Theatre’s trademark mixture of slickness and treacle, That Sordid Little Story ends up more baffling and arbitrary than wickedly pointed.
Not that there aren’t some high points along the way. The music, performed by a five-piece onstage ensemble, offers a lovely lilting counterpoint to the dramatic action. In its second act, when Billy rather mysteriously takes up with a pair of Latino day laborers, the play becomes temporarily bilingual, an intriguing and effective choice. And among generally solid performances, Sean Ellis stands out as a ranting stand-up comic. Despite the copious local color and quasiphilosophical musing, though, That Sordid Little Story, like its amiably bland protagonist, never makes all that deep an impression.
