There's an important message in this play, and the performers are all in top form, but there seem to be two plays taking place. The main play is , as the title suggests, about the lives of four young men growing up and the influences of their church on their lives. The second play, which seems to act as both comic relief and something to fill time while costumes changes occur, features two barflies commenting on their lives.
The four boys encompass the range of gay lives. Mark (Emerson Collins) is the defiant one who sees the hypocrisy in bible teachings; Benny (William Belli) embraces his queerness to become a drag queen, Andrew (Matthew Scott Montgomery) becomes a victim of his own personal demons, and TJ (Luke Stratte-McClure) denies his gayness and lives a forced hetero life. These stories are quite moving.
The barflies are an aging queen (Leslie Jordan) and an aging woman (Dale Dickey) who tell their stories and compare their lives while quietly getting drunk, night after night. There's a quiet desperation underlining their stories and only alcohol can brig relief.
Jordan and Dickey are just plain great, perched on their bar stools and trading gossip and quips while they hoist glass after glass. They could center a play all by themselves. Montgomery becomes the dramatic center of the sissies.
The cast also includes Newell Alexander as the clueless preacher, Rosemary Alexander as Andrew's frantic mother, Ann Walker as Benny's grandmother, Bobbi Eakes as Mark's bible thumping mother, and Joe Patrick Ward as the pianist at the bar.
Many of these actors appear in other works by Del Shores and people his sordid universe of eccentrics and zealots.
