Putting the "fun" in "dysfunctional family"

Playwright Kelleen Conway Blanchard is a lot like you and me. She gets up in the morning, finds some beverage to wake up her brain cells and starts her day in front of her computer.

Here is where our similarity probably ends. Because when you dive into your e-mail, Blanchard dives into her subconscious, and what she brings back are images of twisted Americana that would make David Lynch smile.

Small wonder then that Annex Theatre, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, has chosen to produce a world premiere of her play "Small Town" as part of its "Oyster Series."

Directed with fiendish charm by Bret Fetzer, Blanchard's domestic comedy is a country-fried horror show.

Think of a worst-case scenario for a family unit. It's got to be the Ledbetters.

Theater review


"Small Town," by Kelleen Conway Blanchard, Tuesdays-Wednesdays through Feb. 21, Gail Stellner Studio, Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave., Seattle; $5-$10 (800-838-3006 or www.annextheatre.org).

Blanchard starts with clichés that she turns into cartoons.

Then she gives her cartoon characters enough interesting quirks to turn them into real people. It's the "Simpsons" technique, and it works really well with the biggest cliché of them all: serial killer.

Ruby (Teri Lazzara) is the mom. Ruby wears a beehive hairdo the height of a parking garage. She smokes through a hole in her throat and rarely gets out of her bathrobe.

Her one-eyed daughter Lucinda (Betsy Morris) hangs out perpetually on the couch, half the time dreaming of her former glory as a two-county "pork queen," the other half wondering if her faithless, loser boyfriend Bud (Daniel Christensen) is worth the trouble.

Ruby's son, Stu Lionel (Aaron LaPlante), rounds out the family trio. Stu Lionel, a giant boy who aged into a man, spends all of his time in the family basement doing — well — we're not sure.

With the arrival of Sheriff Dwayne (Chris Dietz), Stu Lionel's underground activities take on sinister implications. Dwayne tells the Ledbetters that a number of mailmen are missing — 17 so far — a fact that doesn't seem to surprise Stu Lionel one bit.

The ensemble enjoys every gruesome minute.

Every actor gets funny, outrageous stuff to say and do. Several even get to sing.

The pearl in this delirious swine of a show is Morris, who gives child-woman Lucinda a kind of big-hearted weirdness that is as winning as it is demented.

Finally, though it is early in the year, Bret Fetzer's witty set design is a 2007 front-runner in the make-something-really-great-out-of-nothing category.