Appalachia has its many traditions, one of which is Decoration Day, a time during late spring to early summer where families flock to the cemeteries to tend to the burial sites of their loved ones. This folk tradition has roots in Scotch-Irish and African ancestor veneration celebrations and is an inspiration for Memorial Day in the United States. For this upcoming Memorial Day holiday, Theater23 kicks off the world premier of the latest work by Knoxville Poet Laureate and local playwright Linda Parsons: Decoration Day, a haunting tale of family, legacy, and tradition that leans heavily into the Appalachian folk tradition of its namesake. Director Steven O’Shea notes that the play is “about prodigals coming home” who “aren’t necessarily aware of their need for home until they confront the wounds from their past and learn for what truly it is they’ve been longing.”
Decoration Day is the story of Kate Hughes (Charity Combs) and her aunt June Rankin (Susan Jackson), who have come to the Rankin Family Cemetery in East Tennessee to celebrate Decoration Day. Kate isn’t super thrilled about celebrating deceased distant relatives, and she wrestles with memories of her recently deceased mother Cordie (Amanda Wasinger) and her incarcerated father Boyd (Steven Trigg). Along with bittersweet memories, Decoration Day unearths the family’s secrets involving the town preacher Brother Carter (Brian Wasinger), a heist involving Boyd’s ex-con buddy Nickel Widner (Kyle Badgley), and a tragic accident from the past that swells to the surface.
Set designer JP Schuffman bisects the stage into two sets central to the action of Decoration Day. Stage right bears the Rankin Family Cemetery bordered by a wrought iron fence and a stone wall. A few flat markers and rounded headstones dot the cemetery, with fresh soil upturned around one in particular; a burial has recently taken place. Off to stage left sits a twin bed flanked by a window, the scene of many flashbacks and the climax of the dramatic action.
While opening night did not go without a few minor hiccups, and at times the localization was a bit heavy handed, overall Decoration Day was an interesting narrative with unexpected twists and turns—potentially one too many, but I was along for the ride. Combs as Kate Hughes brought an honest skepticism to her role, balanced with a bit of naïveté and self-conviction that was rather engaging. Susan Jackson as Aunt June stumbled a bit over her lines in the first act but worked up to a beautifully delivered monologue in the latter half of the production. Steven Trigg as Boyd Hughes balanced the complexity of his character well as his motivation shifts throughout the play. While his final climactic scene with Combs did not move me as much as I was hoping it would, Trigg’s best moments are the awkward ones when first meeting the family in the cemetery, fresh out of prison.
Amanda Wasinger plays Cordie, who appears in the cemetery as an unseen spirit and in a series of exposition-driven flashbacks in the Rankin family home. As Cordie is left troubled from being saved from drowning by Boyd, Wasinger flits from moments of panic and suffering to empowered self assertion, depending on the flashback. While she switches well between these two modes, I would have liked to have seen a bit more of an edge in her performance. Kyle Badgley as Nickel Widner plays the classic comedic “town drunk” quite convincingly, humorously stumbling across the stage half the time and even urinating on Cordie’s headstone. He provides brief moments of comedic relief, but most of his sleazy behavior paints him as not to be trusted. And despite playing a rather minor role, Brian Wasinger had one of the best performances of the night as the wicked Brother Carter who is sexually abusing Cardie behind closed doors. He commands his lines with a pompous liturgical cadence, his words treading a fine line between sacred and malicious.
Decoration Day runs until May 31 at Borderlands Playhouse, with showtimes on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm. Tickets are available at the Borderlands Playhouse box office, located at 802 Sevier Avenue, or online at https://theater23.org/tickets.
