The Busan English Theater Association will present James McLure’s “1959 Pink Thunderbird Convertible” at the city’s Suyeong Butterfly Theater next week.

The play is split into two one-act comedies, “Laundry and Bourbon,” featuring only three women, and “Lone Star,” with just three men, that show a slice of small-town Texas life.

Both are set around Elizabeth and her husband, Roy, whose 10-year marriage has been marked by Roy’s wandering eye, his scarring two-year hitch in Vietnam and their mutual ongoing admiration for his 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible.

“It’s a take on what I call toxic nostalgia, where you live too much in the past and don’t allow yourself to go forward and become productive in the present and the future,” said Kerry Maher, the play’s director. 

“It’s absolutely a comedy, but there are poignant moments when they reflect back on when they first met and times were good. But there is a tendency to live too much in the past, and the convertible is a symbol of that inability to move forward.”

Maher said he was introduced to the play through one of his graduate school professors, who appeared in the original production of one of the plays. The two scripts were written separately, with “Laundry and Bourbon” written as a later companion piece to “Lone Star.”

Maher said that the two worked individually but together they made for a full night of drama and reinforced each other.

“What’s fun is, all the references that are made in the first one, you can see in the second,” he said, adding that there was an added element of suspense for the cast, who would not see the other half of the performance until the dress rehearsal.

The first performance will be on Nov. 7 at 8 p.m., with a special “pay what you want” admission charge.

Regular admission of 5,000 won in advance and 10,000 won at the door will be charged for the other shows, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Nov. 8, and at 2 p.m. on Nov. 9.

For more information, visit tinyurl.com/pinkthunderbird.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)