Men play women by ‘Design’ in homage to Atlanta sitcom
THEATER PREVIEW
“Designing Women Live”
Through April 19. 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays. $23 in advance, $26 at door. Onstage Atlanta, 2969 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Decatur. 404-897-1802, www.onstageatlanta.com.
Apologies aside to Coca-Cola and the Braves, there was a time not long ago when Sugarbakers arguably was Atlanta’s best-loved institution.
What’s that, it wasn’t real?
Try telling that to several generations of devoted fans of “Designing Women,” the sassy, serpent-tongued, Atlanta-set sitcom about four female best friends who worked together (but, c’mon, not very hard) at Sugarbakers & Associates interior design firm. For seven seasons on CBS starting in 1986, each episode averaged nearly 15 million viewers; from Lifetime to TVLand to Logo, it’s been rerunning on cable almost ever since.
No wonder "Designing Women Live" almost always sells out — in a good way — at Onstage Atlanta. Starting Thursday night, the Decatur theater company is back with two supersized weekends' worth of its wildly popular, almost word-for-word performance of classic episodes.
A couple of good-to-knows for anyone going: The first episode, “Julia’s Son,” comes from season one, while the second is a mashup of two different episodes (“Miss Trial” and “Foreign Affairs” ) from later seasons, so some minor tweaking’s occurred.
And, as always, the four women are played by men. But for the first time in nine go-rounds of “DWL,” the character of Sugarbakers’ only male employee, Anthony Bouvier, will be played by a woman (Atlanta actress Parris Sarter). What’s more, since Anthony pretends to be Suzanne’s (Onstage’s DeWayne Morgan) maid in “Foreign Affairs,” Sarter will be a woman playing a man playing a woman.
It should be memorable, especially for the lucky audience member selected to play a “Miss Trial” juror during each performance. (You have one line, so don’t blow it!)
