Three wacky sisters in a sloooooow southern play

In “Crimes of the Heart,” a play about three very off-kilter Southern sisters, one of them decides to sample her sister’s box of assorted cream-filled chocolates. She takes a bite of each, then returns them to the box.

When confronted later, she explains she was looking for the one with assorted nuts.

This play is supposed to be about wacky people, an entire community of assorted nuts, but like the box of chocolates, they’re in short supply.

Beth Henly’s play has an uneven past.

Initially, several regional theaters rejected it. But a friend of Ms. Henley’s entered it in the Great American Play Contest of the Actors Theatre in Louisville, without her knowledge. It won Best Play for the Year in 1979, then went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on Broadway in 1981.

But, judging by the Naples Players’ production at the Sugden Community Theatre, its popularity is puzzling, as the opening night’s performance consisted of long stretches of tedium interspersed with sporadic moments of humor. Unfortunately, the payoffs weren’t worth the long waits.

COURTESY PHOTO Crimes of the Heart” is a play about three off-kilter Southern sisters. It’s onstage at the Sugden Community Theatre in Naples through Dec. 19. It started promisingly enough.

Ellen Cooper portrays Chick, a boisterous, bossy cousin of the Magrath sisters. The play wasn’t even five minutes old when Ms. Cooper had the audience laughing as she removed her pantyhose, then wiggled and struggled to squeeze herself into a new pair that were obviously too small.

The play caught fire every time Ms. Cooper was on stage, but her character’s appearances were sadly too few and too brief. (Too bad she wasn’t cast as one of the sisters.)

Mai Puccio, Victoria Diebler and Ariana Da Frota play the three sisters Lenny, Meg and Babe, respectively. But they don’t look or feel related at all, and Ms. Da Frota appears miscast, as she looks as if she’s 12 or 13. (Her character’s oldest sister, Lenny, celebrates her 40th birthday in the play.)

“Crimes of the Heart” demands top- notch actors capable of playing both drama and comedy, as the play teeters between both.

Director Annie Rosemond herself says in her director’s notes in the program trying to balance the humor and pathos so inherent in the play.”

That balance isn’t quite there yet in this production.

There are times when the audience should feel uncertain whether to laugh or cry, because they want to do both. Instead, we’re given moments such as a report of Lenny’s horse being struck by lightning, and we don’t know whether to laugh or not because we’re not given enough cues by the actors.

During one of the play’s most famous scenes, two characters are so over-tired and stressed that they start laughing while explaining that another character is now in a coma and may die soon. The more horrified they are that they’re laughing, the more they laugh.

It’s a scene that epitomizes the entire play — that strange truth that in the midst of hard times or even grieving, we can find uproarious humor, that extreme opposite emotions can exist so close to each other.

“Crimes of the Heart” should take us through a roller-coaster ride of emotions, but this production doesn’t. It feels like a playwright just dropping us down into Southern Gothic Land, piling wackiness upon wackiness. (Though a line — said with great disdain — about someone having “half-Yankee children” garnered some laughs.)

Ms. Diebler entertains with her wantsto be-a-singer character, and Ms. Puccio portrays the uptight, anxious older sister with sufficient reserve. Bill Bridges, playing the taciturn Doc Porter, makes his Naples Players debut, while Keith Gahagan does a good job as a lawyer in love with his client.

All the Mississippi accents are as flat as earth, with some twang thrown in.

Joan Laughlin’s costumes are a great reflection of the characters. I especially loved the contrast of Chick’s colorful dresses and Lenny’s buttoned-up floral dresses.

Todd Potter’s set looks like a kitchen right out of a conservative southern home, with linoleum floors, decorative plates on the walls and baskets above the cupboards.

But something is missing in this production; not only did it fail to entertain, but it failed to keep my interest.

And that’s a true crime. ¦

If you go

>> What: “Crimes of the Heart”
>> When: through Dec. 19
>> Where: The Sugden Community Theatre, 701
Fifth Avenue South, Naples
>> Cost: $30
>> Information: Call (239) 263-7990 or go to
www.naplesplayers.org