PENELOPE LEMON

A recently divorced, financially struggling mom faces online dating challenges when a nude picture of her surfaces on the internet.

You would think things couldn't get worse for Penelope Lemon. Since the timer ran out on her marriage to the biggest nerd in her neck of Virginia, she and her son—bullied and dubbed Fart Boy by his schoolmates—have had to move into her parents' basement. Her job as the top waitress at Coonskins, a so-called roadhouse where bus tours unload patrons to compete for tables with "a once-in-a-lifetime view of the parking lot and the traffic on Lee Highway," could easily be mistaken for one of the circles of hell. For a 40th birthday gift, her mother has bought her a Christian dating app called Divote, where she's begun to receive messages from hunky prospects like BrettCorinthians2:2, but her best friends, Sandy and Rachel, are convinced she'd be better off doing macrame or reading The Kite Runner than wading back into the dating pool. Then something happens to prove their point. While navigating through the porn-site pop-ups that make it so annoying to use her father's ancient computer, she's sucked in by an ad for PaybacksAreHeaven.com. There she finds herself particularly engaged by a photo of a sleepy redhead on a waterbed. Then the memories come flooding back. "Yes, now that she thought of it, she had definitely posed nude while hitting a bong. The bong was green. Her name was Tinkerbell. Recalling all this, Penelope spent a moment wondering if she was really meant for life in the middle class." Majors (Loves Winning Plays, 2012, etc.) writes lines like that for breakfast, so you'll want to stay for lunch.

A light and lively sendup of modern woes.