Del Shores: Sordid Confessions

Early on in his charming, ambling and ultimately "satisfying in the way a corn dog and cotton candy meal at the State Fair satisfies" way, Del Shores "confesses" that he's on Paxil. The mood-altering anti-depressant causes him to ramble, he warns.

And so Sordid Confessions, the one-man show playing on Theater Row this weekend, goes: Named after Shores' most famous creation -- the play, film and eventual Logo series -- the playwright gives an adoring audience 75 minutes of rambling, ambling, shambling tales.

Shores was born in Winters, Texas, which is probably as isolated and gloomy as it sounds, and was raised by a Baptist preacher. As if this weren't Bront�-esque enough, being gay was probably a blessing that turned his upbringing from American gothic to Southern-fried absurd.

Shores begins by trashing Sarah Palin. No one in the Palin family is spared -- not even the brain-damaged infant Trig, whose name, Shores points out, is short for a description of a type of Down's syndrome. Not to mention, he bitchily adds, a subject the poor kid will never master.

That hilarious bit of nastiness is as over-the-top as he gets, although he scores some nice points at the expense of Diahann Carroll, who apparently took her Dominique Devereaux role in Dynasty waaaaay too seriously. He met Carroll and Raquel Welch for a business lunch at L.A. restaurant the Ivy.

The two aging divas were considering a "geriatric Ab Fab" sitcom, and Shores was being considered as the show's writer. Carroll had just come from "the dentist," which apparently on the Left Coast is one of the (many) circumlocutions for "plastic surgery." Anyway, the injections had her bleeding all over her face.

When it comes to altering their bodies, aging women opt for the face or the ass, Welch says, as Carroll is nursing her wounds. "Diahann obviously chose the face."

Shores also jokes about the Judd Family. As a Country music non-fan and someone who could care less what anyone says about anything on Oprah, I confess this was lost on me. He also seems to spend a lot of time on social media, much of it responding to fans and non-fans alike.

Some of this produces some good material. He reads the note from "Chrissie" (later spelled "Chrissy," giving rise to speculation as to the real author), who chides him for dissing Randy Harrison, who played the blond twink on Queer as Folk, for which Shores was a writer.

When "Chrissy" tells Shores that Harrison is no longer working in TV "because of writers like him," but instead is "working with authors like William Shakespeare, Ibsen, Beckett" and others, he responds, "he is not working with" those authors "because they're dead. And if they were alive, they would not be working with Randy Harrison."

This is good stuff, but some of the social-media stuff is no more or less snarky than what the rest of us waste our days typing out on our home computers (he said as he types away at his home computer ...).

My favorite riff was the one where he complains about fat homeless people. For myself, it's the panhandlers who are smoking (I quit when they got too expensive). It's politically incorrect, but face it: We all think that.

The night I saw Shores was certainly enlivened by an extended appearance by Caroline Rhea. Rhea, whom I had discounted as more mainstream in her appeal, surprised me by proving to be a winning comedian who knows her way around a gay audience.

My one disappointment with the show is that Shores doesn't mention his marriage or his two daughters. A one-man show requires above all else honesty in all things. Raising two children is certainly a major mark in anyone's life, and I would have loved to hear this brilliantly witty man's incisive commentary on how he did before, during and after coming out.

Despite that, Shores makes the time go by fleetingly. The pleasantly intimate club below the West Bank Cafe gives him the perfect venue to collectively hug his audience and send them all out with smiles as big as Texas.

Del Shores: Sordid Confessions is playing at the Laurie Beechman Theater below the West Bank Cafe, just west of the northeast corner of Ninth Avenue & 42nd Street, through Dec. 12 only. Call 212-352-3101 or go to Spin Cycle for tickets.