By Tom Helma for the Lansing City Pulse
Published October 7, 2009

Yee-haw and woo-hoo! The Grand Ole Opry-style of broad, redneck Southern comedy is alive and well at Starlight Dinner Theatre, with “Southern Hospitality,” the third in a trilogy of plays by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten.

Is there an audience for this vaudevillian, “Hee-Haw” influenced farce?

Judging by the crowd at last Friday’s opening performance, hell, yes!

Starlight founder Linda Granger has cleverly captured a niche of the live theater market here, seniors and their precocious grand-teens. Twenty tables of eight were filled with an audience of mostly older folks. Included in this bunch were a table or two of whitehaired ladies, resplendent in red hats and purple garb.

Central to “Southern Hospitality,” and this trilogy, are the witty Futrelle Sisters, led by Granger, as Honey Ray, and including Rhonda Lynn (Mary Koenigsknecht), Twink (Emily English) and Frankie- Futrelle-Dubberly (Jane Goebel). A bigger-haired bevy of low-class charmers might never ever be found.

Granger’s Honey Ray is the control monger, leading her sisterly troupe into a festival to “save the town” of Fayro, Texas, from economic doom by attracting a new factory-owner to set up shop there.

All four sisters deliver the goods, accents and gestures overblown to a wonderfully comic exaggeration, with English leading the charge as bride-to be Twink.

Koenigsknecht is equally as funny throughout the play, while Goebel plays off a doofus husband with a flurry of deadpan straight lines.

The mythical Fayro is something of a Southern version of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, except here the women are strong, the men are clearly below average and the children are heard but not much seen.

Community theater veteran Winifred Olds plays the elderly Aunt Ivy in a cameo role, during which she gets to make withering comments to each of the sisters and anyone else who crosses her line of vision.

In the end, the town is saved, of course, but not before a Civil War battle is r e - e n a c t e d with inflated balloons on strings taking the place of a brigade of Northerners.

This is dinner theater served up light, lest full stomachs become slumbering souls midway through the play. The show is played for laughs and, yes, the cast gets them.

‘Southern Hospitality’ By Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten Through Oct. 10 Friday & Saturday: Dinner at 6:30 p.m., show at 7 p.m.  Starlight Dinner Theatre, Waverly East Intermediate School, 3131 W. Michigan Ave., Lansing Dinner & play: $25-$33 Play only: $15 (517) 243-6040 www.starlightdinnertheatre.info

By Jim Fordyce for MIEntertainment.biz
Published October 3, 2009

It was opening night for the new season of shows at the Starlight Dinner Theater. For the uninitiated, this community theater group transforms Waverly Middle School into a dinner theater. Their reputation for an evening of food and fun is intact with this show called Southern Hospitality.

This is the third play in the series about four sisters in a small Texas town, where no one’s elevator goes all the way to the top floor. As if this installment was ripped from the headline, the sisters are concerned about the economy. Frightened that the town will die, they set out to attract business in their own unique way.

Once again, the plot is silly, but very funny. Linda Granger, Emily English, Jane Goebel and Mary Koenigsknecht are once again Honey Ray, Twink, Rhonda, and Frankie.

They have done this so many times they are like the proverbial well-oiled machine. Most of the rest of the cast is back, too. You will love Gordon Hicks as Reynard, and you will die laughing as Winifred Olds plays Iney, the nasty old Aunt you love to hate with pure perfection.

My only complaints on this one is that the spotlights tended to be in the wrong places, and while dinner was good, the biscuits were cold. So if we assume the spotlights will do better and the biscuits will be hot for future shows, I will give this one a good 3 out of Fordyce and urge you to go and enjoy an evening of silly fun.

This show runs Friday and Saturday night through October 10.

Reservation check-in is from 6:00-6:30 p.m. Dinner is served at 6:30 p.m. with the show beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Waverly East Middle School. Reservations are required if you choose to do both dinner and the show, and tickets must be pre-paid. Ticket prices include dinner and the show for $30, $25 for seniors (62+) and students 22 and under with a valid student I.D. Show-only tickets are also available for $15 and can be purchased at the door.

For more information or to make reservations, contact Starlight Dinner Theatre at (517) 243-6040 or visit the website at www.starlightdinnertheatre.com.