‘Monkey Grass’ Offers Parody With a Bang

You can go home again--if you have to. Lee Murphy’s “Monkey Grass,” at the Victory Theatre, is a hybrid of hard-boiled Hollywood parody and eccentric regional character comedy. The result is unwieldy but full of juice, fascinating in its imperfection.

Hollywood producer Letha Messbaum (Molly Cheek), noted for her b.o. blockbusters (interpret the initials how you will), is urgently summoned to her Texas home, where her sister Billie Beth (Kathleen Bailey) has just had brain surgery.

Pregnant and peevish, Letha has left her current shoot on the side of an active volcano for this visit--and she’s miffed to find her sister is going over schedule on her death scene.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Belle Peechy (Maree Cheatham), Letha and Billie Beth’s widowed mother, is preparing to get hitched to her dead husband’s business partner--a liaison that will shortly spell disaster. Meanwhile, Billie Beth’s cheating hubby Bubba (Russell Philpott) has taken up with the town siren but is having second thoughts about abandoning his family.

Meanwhile, Billie Beth and Bubba’s son Buddy (Marty Davis) runs away with his simple-minded new friend Frankwilly (Hardia Madden Jr.), brother of Alma Rae (Bellary Darden), Billie Beth’s new caregiver. The roiling family tensions are aptly punctuated when the volcano erupts, destroying Letha’s production and reputation in one big, scandalous bang.

There are a lot of “meanwhiles”--perhaps too many--in Murphy’s tangled plot, which is tied together by an unnecessary framing device. However, director Maria Gobetti keeps her exemplary cast on track for big laughs. Cheatham is sidesplitting as the fluffy Texas matron whose helplessness conceals a steely nature; Philpott epitomizes Bubba’s Bubba-ness; and Kathy Bailey is hilarious and heartbreaking as the ailing Billie Beth, a beacon of sweetness and calm amid all the swirling eccentricity.

*

* “Monkey Grass,” Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $18-$20. (818) 841-5421. Running time:2 hours, 25 minutes.