In Sister Cities, three grown sisters scattered across the nation arrive at the home of their mother upon receiving word, from a fourth, of her death the day before. More surprising to them than her demise mom had been sick a long time -- is that her lifeless body still is in the bathtub upstairs.
The Women's Theater Project cast under artistic director Genie Croft delivers some funny and disturbing moments in this southeastern premiere of a play by writer/actor Colette Freedman. Too many moving moments are defused too quickly in favor of one-liners, but that's not the fault of the actresses.
In a gimmick with little resonance outside the punning of the title, the sisters are named for the cities in which they were born -- except for Carolina, now a lawyer, who got a state and so we have Austin, Baltimore and Dallas. Mom, a professional dancer who married four times, got around in her younger days in more ways than one. In her final years, though, mother Mary was increasingly stilled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the paralyzing illness widely referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, and was cared for by Austin.
The action plays out in five scenes in the home in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., most on a Saturday afternoon but one taking place a week earlier. There's a pajama-party feel to the opening minutes as the sisters gradually arrive from locales near and far to join Austin and the many vodka bottles on hand. The squirming and slouching of the first scene will be balanced dramatically by the opening minutes of the second act when Mary (a mesmerizing Linda Bernhard) sits still in a wheelchair to describe her lives - love, family, professional in an unsentimental monologue.
Freedman's sisters can come off as stereotypes as she goes for a laugh in a story that swerves from silliness to melodrama, but Kim Ehly (as Austin), Elise Girard (Carolina), Beth McIntosh (Baltimore) and Melanie Leibner (Dallas) deliver some fine moments along the way.
