MANCHESTER, NH– In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father’s funeral, the Turpin’s other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than two cents. As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, “When I die, don’t tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you.” Amidst the chaos, the Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral.
Not since “Steel Magnolias” has a more colorful and dysfunctional group of Southern eccentrics gathered below the Mason-Dixon line. When the patriarch of the Turpin family keels over dead in the first scene, the struggle to get him buried involves the whole clan, including the not-so-grieving widow who wants to put “Mean and Surly” on the tombstone.
Majestic’s Dearly Departed is directed by Michele Bossie of Milford, and stars Ernest Bass of Hooksett, Deborah Comire of Manchester, Lori Coyle of Goffstown, John Disario of Manchester, Mike Gulezian of Derry, Gregg Kunkel of Manchester, Sheila Melanson of Bedford, Carole Neveux of Concord, Theresa Pratte of Manchester, Trystan Stoffel of Goffstown, Aaron Swope of Derry, and Patty Thomas of Londonderry,
Join us for “Dearly Departed” on Friday & Saturday June 23 & 24 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, June 25 at 2 p.m. Performances will be held at The Derry Opera House, 29 West Broadway, Derry, NH. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors 65 and above and $10 for youth 17 and under. Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at 669-7469, online at www.majestictheatre.net or at the door prior to the
