Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd.

Actor/writer Keith Stevenson has tapped into his West Virginia background in his hillbilly comedy, Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd. now playing in its six month at Pacific Resident Theater. The one-act play is a prime example of Southern Gothic humor: all five of its characters are caricatured outrageously as they live their lives out in a setting of extreme squalor and ignorance (a ramshackle motel out in the boonies).

What saves the play from being a complete cartoon is Stevenson's good-natured attitude towards his people. His affection for them is infectious; you start by laughing at them, end by laughing with them.

Stevenson plays JD, a bear of a man who is almost Christ-like in his acceptance of human foibles and failings. The motel's handyman, JD offers to share his pigsty of a room with Mitchell (Neil McGowan), a prissy office worker from Maine who has just lost his job (and wife). JD also tries to help salvage the wrecked lives of his neighbors: a crack-addict artist called Marlene (Kendrah McKay) and her pistol-packin' poet boyfriend, Tommy (Alex Fernandez). Completing the redneck rogues gallery is Flip (Michael Prichard), the racist, homophobic owner of the motel.

Fried Meat has a thin plot; it's mostly a series of confrontation scenes between its whacked-out characters, But thanks to Guillermo Cienfuegos' nifty direction and to his skillful cast, the show keeps drawing laughs throughout. The play also ends with one of the best visual punchlines I've ever seen in the theater.