Bad Day Down South

Welcome to the epic emotional universe of the sisters Magrath, also known as Beth Henley’s 1978 kitchen sink tragicomedy, “Crimes of the Heart,” playing at Center Stage Theatre at the Southampton Cultural Center through Sunday.

The sisters are the spine of this southern gothic tale set in lil’ ol’ Hazelhurst, Miss., with more than a touch of Eudora Welty between the lines. 

Lenny is the eldest and drably sensible. As yet unmarried, her life and prospects seem stymied by, of all things, a shriveled ovary. She has spent her life burdened by big-sister duties, which have made her increasingly bitter, particularly as she has been the sole caregiver for their elderly grandfather.

Middle sister Meg is the wild child who gallivanted off to Hollywood to make it as a singer, but returns home after a short stint in a psychiatric ward.

And then there’s the youngest, Babe, all saccharine smiles and doe-eyed, but having “a bad day,” because she’s gone and shot her brute of a husband, as she didn’t much like his looks.

And all of this darkened by a tragic history: Their father deserted their mother, who committed suicide and took the pet cat with her.

A comedy, you ask? Oh yes. This small-town soap opera, which won the playwright a Pulitzer in 1981, offers a unique brand of melancholic humor, where suicide attempts are supposed to be funny and the goal is to have you laughing at death and crying at life. Many may recall the endearing 1986 film adaptation in which Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange, and Diane Keaton perfectly conjured this hurricane of feelings.

The strength of the Southampton production, too, lies with the three female leads. Josephine Wallace, who was noteworthy in Center Stage’s fall production, “Boeing Boeing,” is equally so here as the mousy eldest sister, Lenny. As a neurotic Southerner, she tugs at the heartstrings early on when, alone in the family kitchen, she celebrates her 30th birthday (the ages from page to stage in Southampton require a suspension of disbelief), crying to herself as she blows out a birthday candle that she has been trying to stick into a cookie. 

Bonnie Grice, the award-winning WPPB broadcaster, captivatingly dominates the stage as the middle sister, Meg (ahem, a 26-year-old), broke and beautiful and all gravelly voiced, a gorgeous lush growl that wreaks of whiskey and sex. 

Age-appropriate Tina Marie Realmuto completes the trio as the youngest sibling, Babe. Ms. Realmuto does a fine job with a character who is supposed to be wide eyed and innocent but often appears slightly slow in the head. Were Southern women really that backward in the 1970s?

Then there’s the girls’ antipathetic cousin Chick Boyle, played with daffy humor by Kristin Whiting, who gets the loudest laughs. If there’s a way to play this larger-than-life tacky Southern ditz, other than to leap into caricature, we will never know. Ms. Whiting dives right into a crowd-pleasing bit of physical comedy in the opening scene, squeezing herself, like sausage meat, into a pair of too-small pantyhose. From there, there’s no reeling it in.

Joan Lyons, a regular on this stage as well as behind the scenes, directs “Crimes of the Heart” and offers up a mix of broad strokes and more nuanced scenes where things just seem to unfold. Kudos also to Ms. Lyons, who is credited with the set design, an excellent formica-covered 1970s kitchen that also doubles as a loony bin.

If you haven’t already noticed, male characters play a secondary role in “Crimes.” There’s slow-witted Doc Porter, who is still pining over sexy Meg, who dumped him before running off to Hollywood. Mark Strecker gives a quietly touching performance as the irresistible old beau. Deyo Trowbridge is the only other man and this baby-faced East Hampton High School graduate does a terrific job as Barnette Lloyd, a young lawyer who has taken on Babe’s attempted murder case for his own infatuated but vindictive reasons. 

There are a few crucial moments when heightened naturalism rather than cringey slapstick could have turned this production into a superb one: When Lenny lunges for her condescending cousin Chick and chases her around the kitchen, broom in hand, it should have been less Benny Hill and more a geyser that finally blew; when Meg decides to rekindle old feelings with Doc, the scene should have been more poignant, with much more at stake. Likewise, too, when Babe struggles with her mother’s dark tendencies and contemplates suicide. These are the moments that are supposed to be hilarious but tart, rather than succumbing to the outlandish and producing a play much funnier than it is endearing. 

Well, look at it this way: The Southampton production will make you laugh even if you should probably be crying.

Ms. Lyons said she became interested in staging “Crimes of the Heart” several years ago but had to wait until the rights became available. The delay was almost fortuitous. In today’s female-centric swirl, a play full of colorful characters for women to mine is a wonderful thing. But having background male characters like an abusive husband with a bullet in his liver, a mean old granddaddy with “blood vessels popping in the brain,” an under-age black lover, and even the family horse — a stallion — felled by lightning, is all too devilishly pleasing.

“Crimes of the Heart” will run tonight and tomorrow at 7 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center at 25 Pond Lane. Tickets cost $25, $15 for students.