Opinion: Telephone Talk

A funny thing happened on the way to CTC Theater Live's planned spring productions of "The Murder Room" and "Crazy for You." Perhaps already in volved in local shows such as the Southampton Players' "Damn Yankees," few suitable male actors answered the casting calls.

Photo by Gary Mamay

To top things off, the company's dream lead for both productions, the darkly compelling Thomas Rosamillia, who played Public Enemy Number One in last spring's wonderful "Anything Goes," lingered unavailably in Florida.

Did CTC's board of directors freak out? Au contraire, they converted potential disasters into golden opportunities, rescheduling "Belles," which opened last Friday at the John Drew with an all-female cast, and "Wonderful Town," a low-male musical with two female leads, instead.

Forty-Five Phone Calls

"Belles" is a funny, quirky, even kinky little "play in two acts and 45 phone calls," as the program puts it, by Mark Dunn.

An award-winning Southern writer who is now playwright-in-residence at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre in Manhattan, Mr. Dunn has imagined a Southern family of six girls who strive to transcend the childhood horrors of a drunken father and a mother so phobic she fears electrocution if a raindrop falls during a phone call.

Five of the sisters, ranging in age from 22 to 40, have flown their dysfunctional coop to make new lives in places as far from home as they can get.

Bedridden Materfamilias

The play unfolds on John Mercurio's witty, multilevel set as they phone one another for advice and companionship, waiting, if only subconsciously, for the heart-easing call from Mom that clearly will never come.

As the play opens, all six phones begin to ring on the empty stage while a spotlight tours their various locations. Then the stage goes dark.

The lights go up again on the long-suffering, recently widowed Peggy (Irene Stefanik) in the Memphis sitting room where the sisters grew up and where she now tends their bedridden, senile materfamilias, who, mercifully, remains off-stage.

Disasters

A tireless do-gooder, Peggy functions as a communications center for her scattered siblings, faithfully guilt-tripping them with bad-news bulletins about their declining Mom.

She first calls single-career-wom an-with-a-drinking-problem Aneece (Marion Stark) in Philadelphia, getting her out of the shower to report some fresh disaster and prompting her to phone Roseanne (Louise Shaw), an Atlanta housewife whose minister husband has just walked out on her and their two daughters.

Roseanne calls Audrey (Susann L. Ashraf) in Mississippi. Tricked out in a black lace mantilla and red feather boa, she's an exotic bar-room chanteuse who performs with a marionette she believes is her 4-year-old son, Huckle. In Ms. Ashraf's far-out yet stunningly dignified performance, she is riveting.

Telephone Tag

Audrey phones their hippie sister Sherry (Marie Dahl) in her "living space" in Elk Run, Wash. Something of a nymphomaniac, Sherry has assumed the low-self-esteem name Dust, and is deeply into the paranormal.

Finally there's Paige (Melissa W. Ralph) in Texas, who acquires and dumps boyfriends at a dizzying rate. What with her beeping answering machine, Roseanne's cries to a suicide hotline, Audrey's frantic phoning when Huckle disappears, and Peggy's dreaded bulletins, the sisters run up the huge long-distance bills of a family trying to find its center.

Under Serena Seacat's imaginative direction, "Belles" is an eccentric, funny evening with a lot of heart but occasional unevenness, at least on opening night, when some of the comic timing was thrown off by the Southern drawls.

Among its many joys is meeting three talented young actresses new to the John Drew stage: Ms. Dahl, Ms. Ralph, and Ms. Ashraf, whose future appearances we look forward to.

We also have the pleasure of seeing Ms. Shaw and Ms. Stefanik again. Ms. Shaw played Clarice in CTC's production of "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running" a few years ago, when she was known as Louise Sweeney.

Ms. Stefanik's many fine CTC performances include Agnes in "Dancing at Lughnasa" and her priceless Mom in last year's "True West."

Dramatic Role

And we find Ms. Stark, the singing star of CTC's "Guys and Dolls," "Kiss Me Kate," "South Pacific," "Bells Are Ringing," and "Annie Get Your Gun," in her first non-musical role.

Her speech as the embittered Aneece with her bottle of Stoli reveals an impressive hidden talent.

"Belles" can be seen tomorrow and Saturday nights at 8 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 2:30. It's new, different, and very beguiling.