This disturbing tale, a 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner, is a tale brimming with brutal satire and dark comedy. The family members treat each other with emotional, occasionally physical, cruelty with a lack of respect or any real interest in one another – bounded not by love, but by a dark secret (pssst..........it has something to do with the play’s title!). Hanging over all of the family members is a sense of confusion and insanity evident from the first hilarious exchange between Dodge and his wife Halie, to the creepy final scene.

Capturing the perfect Shepardian blend of lunacy, indifference, and peculiar sense of humor is Antonio “T.J.” Johnson as Dodge, the head of the household who is content to make himself a permanent fixture on the living room’s rotting couch. Not that being “head of the household” means his religious-minded wife (Jill Drexler) won’t outwardly flirt right in front of him with the less-than-pious minister, performed nicely by Charlie Riendeau. Nor does it mean that he can go to sleep on his beloved couch without his menacing son Bradley (Rhys Green) shaving his head till it bleeds. And it certainly doesn’t mean that he knows what’s going on under his own roof, as he is absolutely certain there is no corn growing outside – even after he gets showered with it by his dull-witted but harmless son Tilden (Bill Dunnam).

Vince is shocked when his homecoming is met with complete disinterest, his father and grandfather greeting him as some odd stranger they’d never seen before who is probably a little touched in the head. But Grandpa Dodge might be able to look past that oddness if Vince goes out and picks him up some booze. Vince’s girlfriend Shelly, as the outsider and the only normal one in the bunch, gives us the “sane” perspective on the family, at first not knowing what to do and then accepting them for what they are and trying to be patient and understanding. But she grows angry as Vince’s response is to run out and get drunk, not returning till the next morning. Yet it seems indifference, lack of communication, and ignoring family problems is deeply imbedded in this household.

Performances: April 27 - May 25, 2003