Mountains and Clouds: Four Comedies (review)

Victor Depta. Mountains and Clouds: Four Comedies. Ashland, Kentucky: Blair Mountain Press, 2003. 234 pgs. Paperback. $12.95. Usually, a play that's called a comedy of manners is about uppermiddle class manners, but I think these new plays about working-class, southern Appalachian families are comedies of manners (despite the fact that some people thinkAppalachians have no manners). In these plays, Depta pokes gentle fun at the mores of four working-class families, their friends, and their enemies. The author finds much humor in the ways of these small-town Appalachian families, but he also finds much to honor in them as they attempt to solve ordinary problems—such as how to find love and money—and extraordinary problems—such as how to keep ghosts away. In Depta's love of farce and in his slightly surrealistic plots, tinged with magic realism, he is close kin to one of the South's greatest playwrights, Tennessee Williams. He's also like Williams in his concern with morality, including attitudes toward sexuality—both gay and straight. These comedies are about how to live—at least how to live in a semi-rural area inAppalachia around the beginning of the twentiethfirst century. The plots of his plays center on problems with romance, family, and money. What makes the plays "Appalachian" is their presentation of the conflict between the values of these semi-rural, southern mountain families and the values associated with the outside world. All of the problems in the plays are exacerbated by urban, outside influences, particularly commercial ones. In Depta's comedies, many of the conflicts are resolved by older women, who play a key role in each of the plays. Most of the action of all four comedies takes place in an older woman's house, on her front porch, or in her yard. Always defined as a relative, a mother, grandmother, or aunt, of one or more of the younger characters, the older woman doesn't get far from her house, though other characters come and go. In The Quaker Man and the Jewel, the forty-something, cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking mother, Opal, is the jewel who ends up straightening out the Quaker man, a university professor of religion who's bored with his life. In The Star-Painted House, EuIa (The "eu" prefix is from the Greek word for "well" or "good") helps her depressed nephew (who has literally turned gray from depression) and a young man Bert (who also changes color in the play) see how to enjoy life. Two grandmothers, Judith, in Some Old Lover's Ghost, and Reba, in The Sorrows of Vernon Lee, also help solve problems of the young characters. This wise-woman theme is partly fanciful, but it also 76 depicts reality in many working-class families, maybe particularly in Appalachian families, where the experience of older women is often valued. The older women in these plays are regarded with respect by the younger characters as they try to find a good way to live in the world. The young men in the plays are often in competition for a young woman's affection, and the young women often are looking for the right man, but an even more dominant thread is the problem, for men and women, of earning a living. The plots are forward-looking as they address questions about the young people's future, but the past intrudes and shows its relevance for the present through the appearance of old boyfriends, ghosts, and lost treasure. Throughout the plays is an undercurrent of the problem of loss of innocence; this problem is brought to the fore in the last play, where experience from the past helps to solve the problem. In The Sorrows of Vernon Lee, the adolescent Vernon gets help from both his grandmother and grandfather in learning how to endure his new knowledge of the terrible pain that humans cause one another. These comedies have serious themes, but they are filled with a spirit of fun. In The Star-Painted House, EuIa becomes so exasperated with the family arguments around her that she lies down to drown in a child's plastic wading pool in her yard...