(Photo courtesy Orlando Fringe)
This show contains Adult Language, Mature Themes, Sexual Content and Audience Interaction.
If you thought moving out of a Shasta trailer and into a luxury Lake Eola penthouse would soften Deloris Scrud, you clearly don’t know Deloris.
Or Michael Wanzie.
Orlando’s favorite truck stop waitress turned unlikely literary sensation is back in “DELORIS SCRUD MOVIN’ ON UP – My Meteoric Rise to Fame & Fortune,” and newfound wealth has done absolutely nothing to make her more refined. Thank God.
A direct follow-up to last year’s holiday outing, Wanzie once again slips into the wig, dress and wonderfully warped mind of one of his most beloved characters for what turned out to be one of the biggest laughs I’ve had at this year’s Orlando Fringe Out Fest.
Deloris has apparently been busy since we last saw her. Her book has spent a fictional 15 weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list, she’s moved into a penthouse overlooking Lake Eola and, naturally, embarked on a European tour that put her in the company of everyone from the Pope to European royalty. None of them escape unscathed.
There is a script here, including a wonderfully ridiculous scene from Deloris’ latest attempt at playwriting, but some of the biggest laughs come when Wanzie gets to simply play.
The audience Q&A gives him plenty of opportunity to do just that.
Give Deloris a question and you really have no idea what is going to come back at you. Wanzie knows this character so completely that the line between scripted material and whatever happens to fly out of his mouth becomes almost irrelevant. He’s quick, filthy, occasionally vicious and consistently hilarious.
And when Wanzie himself cracks, gets tickled by something an audience member says or momentarily loses his place, somehow it only makes the whole thing funnier. There’s something particularly endearing about watching the man behind Deloris briefly appear before she takes control again.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Wanzie show without politics finding its way into the room.
The topical material is plentiful and very clearly aimed. Anyone familiar with his work will know exactly what they’re walking into.
But underneath the political jabs, dirty jokes, absurd storytelling and gloriously tacky exterior is something I think explains why Deloris has survived all these years: Wanzie knows his audience, and there is a genuine affection between performer and community.
That was especially evident at Savoy, where the room felt less like an audience watching a character and more like a bunch of old friends who had come to see what outrageous thing Deloris was going to tell us next.
“DELORIS SCRUD MOVIN’ ON UP” is ridiculous, irreverent, unapologetically local and very, very funny. More importantly, it’s the kind of Fringe experience I love — something you really couldn’t imagine seeing anywhere else, performed by someone whose fingerprints have been all over Orlando’s theater community for decades.
Deloris may have moved on up, but thankfully she hasn’t gained an ounce of class.
And I wouldn’t want her any other way.
Very few seats remain, so if you want one last chance to see what fame and fortune have done to Deloris Scrud, grab one while you still can.
See “DELORIS SCRUD MOVIN’ ON UP – My Meteoric Rise to Fame & Fortune” at SAVOY’s Starlite Room on Sept. 12 at 7:30 p.m.
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