A Home Spun Hero

A gingham-draped cyclone named Lulubelle, the toast of Broadway’s footlight empire, is dragged by her rag-tag troupe into a dust-blown whistle-stop where the main thoroughfare is a chalk line between wheat and wilted dreams. A telegram—ink still wet with condescension—beckons her never-met cousin, a straw-chewing cipher called Elmer, to sit in the velvet void of the town’s repurposed granary-cum-theatre. The company expects a hayseed caricature; instead they harvest a limber trickster who back-flips through their choreographed condescension, turning every sequined barb into a boomerang of slapstick epiphany. By the final reel the footlights have blistered, the orchestra’s brass is bent into a banjo, and the star who once sparkled under klieg-light coronation now strips to gingham humility, crooning a reprise that tastes of iron-rich soil rather than champagne.