Full of Gin and Will & Grace

While R man was off being all lawerly in DC, I spent an amusing evening at the theater, enjoying Leslie Jordan’s show “Full of Gin and Regret.” Jordan played Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, the guest star whom Karen would regularly dismiss as “that Keebler elf queen…”

The show was a raconteur’s tour de force. Jordan came out, launched into a string of memoirs (up to and including briefly sharing a jail cell with Robert Downey Jr.,) frequently interrupted himself to wander off track, and did it all in a thick Southern accent. It was, in short, very much like spending the evening in a bar in New Orleans, albeit a very nice one, and with a very funny Big Mess.

There is a common element in Southern life of telling long, involved stories, and doing so in as self-deprecatory and funny way as possible. I’ve got it, all my friends have it, Jason over at Night is Half Gone has it in spades, and so does Leslie Jordan.

Of course it’s important to tell these rambling vignettes in as thick a Southern accent as you can muster. It’s just funnier that way. Leslie Jordan hit the stage sounding like Aunt Pitty Pat from Gone with the Wind and never wavered. Naturally, my own accent, long moribund, rebounded. I cain’t hep it, as soon as I hear those twanging vowels, my own match them drawl for drawl. All I have to do is step off the plane in the Houston airport and suddenly I’m the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Also, because I am Not a Nice Person, I took some pleasure when Miss Jordan (repeatedly) assured the audience he was 54 years old, exactly the same age as me, but looked easily like he had 15 years on me. Just shows you, that fast, glam life is rough.