Jane Martin's peculiar, outlandish title for her/his latest foray into the American Zeitgeist makes perfect sense when you realize this comedic assault is inspired by cross-breeding the schtick of those lame old "Code of the West" B-movies with the platitudes and conventions of horror flicks. Martin's latest entry in the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville (the pseudonymous playwright is widely believed to be former ATL producing director Jon Jory, who has directed all but one Martin premiere, including this one) shows us what has become of Big 8, the tough-talking disillusioned rodeo star from Martin's Talking With... monologue of 20 years ago, who had been fired because she wouldn't put up with the commercializing of her art.
Now in her late forties, Big 8 (Phyllis Somerville) grates cheese at the Beatrice Foods plant but faces foreclosure because she can't meet the mortgage payments on her small Wyoming ranch where she "heals" injured riders, such as her current, good-looking, dimwitted boy toy named Rob Bob Silverado (Leo Kittay). He likes to think of himself as one of the good guys in the mold of cowboy film stars such as Roy, Gene, and Duke, those stalwart protectors of schoolmarms and innocent settlers.
Rob Bob's "schoolmarm" suddenly appears in the guise of a whacked-out, pierced and pregnant (by Big 8's ne-er-do-well lounge singer son) urchin named Shedevil Monica Koskey), who is fleeing a one-eyed Ukranian biker who has allegedly chopped off her hand. Her hair is the color of "throwed up strawberry milkshake," but that doesn't keep Rob Bob, who encounters her while he is wearing nothing but a jockstrap, from experiencing love at first sight. When Black Dog (Mark Mineart), the hulking, Frankenstein-like biker, makes his terrifying entrance, the horror film ethos takes over and keeps the audience howling from a mixture of fright and hilarious enjoyment. The wildly improbable plot twists come fast and furiously.
Big 8's sister Shirl (Peggity Price), who processes meat at the local slaughterhouse and has dated the apologetically impotent deputy sheriff, Baxter Blue (William McNulty), for nine years, lends her work skills to solving the mess at Big 8's house. (Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" song is a side-splitting introduction to this scene.) Price as a good ole gal whom nothing seems to faze, shines with some of the play's funniest lines.
Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage is high-style farce, exuberantly played by a first-rate cast and richly supported by Paul Owen's ranch kitchen set and Lindsay W. Davis's spot-on costumes. It can be relished as an old-fashioned "laff riot," as they used to say in show-biz ads, or as a devastating skewering of our pop-culture inanities.
