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| Jerry Lanning, J.J. Jepson, Alice Cannon. |
Another of the many one-night flops of the early 70s, this
no-redeeming-qualities musical annoyed the critics, earning such brickbats from
Mel Gussow as “dismal,” and “a show of awesome ineptitude”; from Richard Watts
as “dreadful,” “a mishap by untalented amateurs,” “tedious mediocrity”; and
from Douglas Watt, who damned it as “excruciating nonsense” and a show whose “inanity
is practically matchless.”
It is set in the deep Southern town of Sunflower, Alabama,
and uses flashbacks to tell its tale of a "Traveller" (Jerry Lanning), who returns
to his hometown to relive in memory the summer events of 15 years earlier, when
he was 18. He narrates the story and sometimes participates in it as an advisor
to the youth who is him as a younger man (J.J. Jepson). Various town
characters, stereotypically rural, appear, including his drunken old dad (Lloyd
Harris), his foster mom (Evelyn Brooks), the local preacher (Hal Robinson), his
fat aunt (Travis Hudson), and others.
