Playwright: Emily Schwartz
At: Scott Dray Productions in association with The Strange Tree Group at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport St.
Phone: (773) 935-6860; $15
Runs through: July 31
Well, they DON'T have southern accents. Their age is indeterminate, but they are NOT elderly. They dress in the fashions of the Roosevelt administration—Theodore, not Franklin—and their household ambiance features needlepoint cushions and crocheted antimacassars, augmented by a radio playing vo-dee-o-do music and a TV set on which Zorro airs. What IS certain, however, is that the sisters Geneva and Jennifer Derbyshire are both a bit—ODD, thus following in a literary tradition ranging from Martha and Abby Brewster to Joan and Jane Hudson.
The Misses Derbyshire do not murder anyone in the course of Emily Schwartz' four short plays, but death haunts their fantasies. In particular those of the childlike Jennifer, whose macabre playacting is tolerated by the severe Geneva (when the former reports the discovery of a head floating in the lake, the latter calmly inquires, 'Was it attached to anything?'). Sometimes Geneva joins in her younger sibling's scenarios, as when a warning from the swashbuckling TV hero has them preparing to repel a hoard of banditos—until they weary of these activities and contrive to blame everything on the potted plant of the play's title. And imagination being infectious, an evening's visitor soon finds himself embroiled in a raucous game of Cowboys And Indians, departing afterward with a leafy captive duct-taped to his wrist.
That he thoroughly enjoys his risky folie à trois is testimony to the duo whose antics could have emerged as facile gothic camp, but instead exercise a curious charm. Part of this is the underlying tone of affection permeating their volatile relationship, the rest in the restraint imposed by Carol Enoch and Kara Klein on their often acidic repartee, enigmatic tacits contrasting with bursts of frenzied physicality. (Both Scott Cupper, playing the hapless gentleman caller, and the much-abused ficus tree, called into action as its mistresses require, deserve combat pay.)
In an age of snappy Situation Comedies, a slow-building humor rooted in CHARACTER is rare, indeed. But those willing to enter into the world of the eccentric Mesdemoiselles Derbyshire are certain to be amply rewarded.