We double dip, granting perhaps the first Pitch Best Of tie not because we're indecisive but because these two actors so flagrantly stole their respective shows that security alarms clanged at the exits. In minor roles, Tim Scott and DeDe Deville hijacked Buddy and Dolly from reasonable facsimiles of Buddy and Dolly themselves, both winning the biggest laughs of the night. At the American Heartland Theatre, in his first big role in Kansas City, Scott played the master of ceremonies introducing Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper on the Night the Music Died, yelping directly at the audience with a screechy comic enthusiasm divorced from anything we'd ever heard. The only thing more satisfying than watching him there has been watching him flourish in the months since, storming stages all over town. As for Deville: This drag queen supreme did it all with just one line in Late Night Theatre's Dolly Parton tribute. Playing a lush of a secretary, she set off an avalanche of laughs just by croaking out the booziest "Atta girl" in the history of theater, a moment Late Night should put on YouTube right this goddamn second.
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