Review: ‘Attala County Garden Club’ is a fresh bouquet of comedy 

Though playwright Topher Payne originally wrote The Attala County Garden Club for Onstage Atlanta in 2006, the updated Process Theatre Company production at Onstage — running through September 29 — feels like a fun and fresh new work from one of the city’s favorite voices.

And this Mississippi-set comedy about a group of social outcast gardeners in 1987, directed by DeWayne Morgan, has moments of inspired nuttiness, including a must-see performance from Payne’s longtime collaborator Amanda Cucher. 

The character the pair created in Alice Hodge — a home-permed, Bible-quoting, flat-voiced, green-thumbed weirdo-among-weirdos — is a comic masterpiece. And Cucher’s performance as Alice, complete with a wig styled by Payne himself, is worth the price of admission on its own. She is hilarious, stealing nearly every scene she’s in with deadpan punchlines.

The plot revolves around Rose Chipley (Kat Stoneback), a newlywed and new mom seeking to establish her footing in society by joining the Kosciusko Garden Club. But her membership application is rejected, even though the club is run by her mother.

Dejected, she ends up in the company of Bettye Little-Landrum (Jennifer Lee), a woman desperate for social clout who seeks revenge against a town that shunned her for wrecking the mayor’s marriage. Bettye runs a rival and more diverse garden club, featuring members like Alice, the dimwitted Effie Jo Pickle (Demmarie Boreland) and widow Danita Dixon (Olivia Drumgoole).

But this club’s methods of raising flowers is extremely unconventional, Rose finds. And eventually her involvement in the group threatens her marriage to Michael (JR McCall) and her friendship with her hairdresser, Jolene (Cathe Hall Payne), who has uncovered many of Bettye’s secrets.

The show makes the best of its low budget. The script has moments of real invention, including a montage designed like a church shadow puppet show by animator Keira Quinn. 

The execution of this sequence, full of expository dialogue, is fun. Quinn’s work is good, but an actual live puppet show, performed by someone doing a real monologue, would’ve felt more dazzling for the audience, like a highwire act without a safety net. As it stands, the moment slows down the show’s momentum a bit.

Still, it’s a very good play with a great cast and solid laughs.

Payne has revisited old material before, notably his post-Trump era rewrite of the 2013 left-wing terrorism comedy Angry Fags. He knows how to create sharp, wild comedy that resonates with depth and timeliness, and he’s done it again here.

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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.