‘Cottonwoods’: Hick Humor and Secrets on a Stormy Night

Adam Rapp’s darkly funny “Ghosts in the Cottonwoods,” at the 24th Street Theatre, ludicrously layers bad luck and hick humor, as the actors earnestly portray their characters’ emotional and physical squalor on Juliana von Haubrich’s atmospheric rustic shack set.

As the audience enters the dimly lit, smoky theater, Pointer Scully (Jeremy Maxwell) stands naked on the rough boards of a ramshackle house. On the wall behind him, holes are mended with used foil and a tubeless television body frames a painting of Jesus like an altar. He’s modestly cupping his genitals as his mother, Bean (Maude Mitchell), is sucking out liquid from the sores on his pallid body.

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Bean has prepared a feast for her older son’s (Marc Lynn) homecoming. But before he arrives, a wounded stranger, Newt (Larry Joshua), seeks refuge. Everyone has secrets on this dark and stormy night, including Pointer and his too perky girlfriend, Shirley (Linda Cardellini).

Rapp creates a loony backwoods culture in which a man and a pie get hit by lightning and the man survives; people perform dentistry on themselves; shacks slide down muddy hills unless they’re anchored to trees; a boy in disco rags finds poetry in the Bee Gees; and a mother has incestuous longings.

Chris Fields directs this hillbilly tale with an earnest lunacy and captures the twangy rhythms of Rapp’s language.

The result is a moonshine-fermented nightmare of blood, family and backwoods justice.

BE THERE

“Ghosts in the Cottonwoods,” 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., North University Park. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends May 28. $15. (213) 745-6516. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.