Doublewide, Texas is booming, having grown from four doublewides to 17 just in four years.
The Adobe Theater presented the comedy “Doublewide, Texas” by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten in 2018 to a sold-out crowd. Its sequel “Honky Tonk Hissy Fit” arrives on Friday, March 18, just in time for a pandemic-weary audience, director Georgia Athearn said.
This time, an Austin-based corporation is way too interested in Doublewide. Mayor Joveeta Crumpler is the only person suspicious enough to sound the alarm, but no one is listening. Big Ethel Satterwhite has her hands full trying to teach the town’s good-‘ol-boy police chief Baby Crumpler how to dirty dance for a county-wide competition. Joveeta’s mother Caprice is too self-involved with her “career” as a local celebrity to sense the growing threat, or to realize grumpy old Haywood Sloggett is increasingly drawn to her.
Caprice is also hell-bent on keep her neighbor and rival Big Ethel from horning in on her domain – the Stagger Inn bar.
Director Athearn stopped short of calling the characters Texas stereotypes.
“They’re not stereotypes; they’re real people,” she said.
“There is the matriarch Caprice Crumpler. She is a woman in her 70s trying to be a woman much younger than she is. She’s loud, she’s vivacious, she likes to drink beer.”
Caprice is mother to the mayor, Joveeta, whose doublewide doubles as both a trailer and the town hall. Georgia Dean Rudd is the proud owner of the Bronco Betty’s Buffeteria, where she specializes in diet meals sometimes eschewed by her elderly clientele.
“This town is filled with heart, with people with heart,” Athearn said. “My significant other said, ‘Why are you making fun of Texans?’ and I said, ‘I’m not; they’re people.’ ”
Beginning on July 22, the Adobe will stage “The Sweet Delilah Swim Club,” another “Doublewide” sequel by the same authors.
“We want to bring people back (to the theater) with a high,” Athearn said.
