Written by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, who conceived the original TV sitcom on which it’s based, Horizon Theatre’s “Designing Women” makes for a rather pedestrian stage play. Subtitled “2020: The Big Split,” it’s set in the Atlanta interior designing firm of Sugarbaker and Associates, and resurrects most of the regular characters from the series (1986-1993).
One of the most notable things about this iteration is how, nearly 30 years after signing off the air, none of them seems to have aged a day. For another thing, the comedy is now peppered with R-rated language and a timely, modified plot that includes fleeting mentions of COVID-19 mask mandates, the BLM and MAGA movements, and the 2020 presidential election. For localized good measure, it also throws in a few passing references to Buckhead.
Horizon artistic associate Heidi McKerley directs, and the production boasts the slick scenery of Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay, and stylish costumes designed by L. Nyrobi Ross.
Credit: Greg Mooney
Credit: Greg Mooney
The show chiefly centers around the sibling rivalry between Julia Sugarbaker (Katherine LaNasa), the chic and savvy head of the company, and her more frivolous and cosmetic sister, Suzanne (Beth Beyer), a career trophy wife of sorts dealing with her latest divorce. Judging by the angry, foul-mouthed messages frequently recorded among the office’s voicemail, Julia is an opinionated left-leaning liberal. Suzanne’s main talking points, meanwhile, tend to involve beauty pageants and an admiration for “Gone With the Wind.”
Except, perhaps, when it comes to swapping slaps, they aren’t very well matched in the script. Julia calls her sister a “recreational provocateur” prone to “conversational incontinence,” but Suzanne can hardly compete. “Thank you, Miss Woke,” she quips at one point. At another, she recounts a run-in with a name-calling fast-food employee and wonders, “Who is this Karen person?” Beyer has fun with it. For her part, LaNasa has a distracting habit of resisting interaction or even much eye contact with her scene partners, in favor of pitching most of Julia’s one-liners directly to the audience.
Driving home the distinction between the sisters are the men in their lives. Suzanne’s impending ex is a bigoted good-ol’-boy and rabid Trump supporter (Luis R. Hernandez). Julia’s love interest is a dashing architect named, no kidding, Wynn Dollarhyde (Robin Bloodworth). Also newly added to the mix are Cleo Bouvier (Tiffany Porter), a lesbian relative of the absent male co-worker from the network series, and Haley McPhee (Eve Krueger), the firm’s receptionist, a scatterbrained evangelical type.
Rounding out the play’s characters are the other two principals from the TV show, Charlene (Lane Carlock) and Mary Jo (Joanna Daniels), neither of whom is any better developed here by Thomason than to be best defined as the Jean Smart role and the Annie Potts role, respectively.
Don’t worry about the maudlin melodramatics that transpire when one of the women is diagnosed with COVID-19 and the rest of them are forced to quarantine together. Never fear, because, in the end, if all you’re looking for is mainstream escapist entertainment, Horizon’s “Designing Women” is nothing more or less than precisely what you’d expect.
THEATER REVIEW
“Designing Women”
Through Nov. 6. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $27-$35. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Avenue NE (in Little Five Points), Atlanta. 404-584-7450. www.horizontheatre.com.
Bottom line: Ho-hum.
