Cast make ‘Pearls’ a real gem

Michele Lowe’s “String of Pearls” fits neatly into several tried-and-true – if not clichéd – theatrical categories.

It’s a women’s issues play. The cast and characters are all female.

It’s a monologue play, in which the characters routinely turn to the audience to deliver confessional speeches.

It’s a play in which the story is centered around an object – in this case, a pearl necklace – which passes through the hands of different characters over several generations.

So it’s a tribute to the cast of the Civic’s Studio Theatre production that this show feels fresh, genuine and true. Director Susan Hardie expertly guides a cast of five through a story that contains 27 characters from 1969 to the present.

I must mention that the word “fresh” applies not just in the sense of lively, but also bold, saucy and impudent. This play is not 20 minutes old before Beth, a character played by Kate Vita, delivers a monologue that is, hands-down, the most explicit sexual speech I’ve ever heard on a local stage. If you didn’t know that the term “pearl necklace” can mean more than a piece of jewelry, you’ll certainly find out here, in vivid detail.

It may be why several people left at intermission. Don’t buy a ticket to this play if you don’t want to hear frank anatomical talk. Yet the rest of the play deals with more weighty subjects, including motherhood, careers, aging parents and love.

Hardie’s staging is spare, with nothing on stage except chairs and black cubes. She relies on the actresses to create a vivid world, and they do.

Three of the actresses – Vita, Jean Hardie and Tami Rotchford – have established themselves over the years as three of Spokane’s most gifted actresses. Jean Hardie is exceptional, especially in the role of Ela, a divorced, blue-collar Wisconsin mom. She got some of the biggest laughs of the show from off-stage, yelling at her kids.

Vita is the backbone of the ensemble, not just in the key role of Beth, the original owner of the pearl necklace, but also as the cold, elegant and soulless Abby, a money manager who sleeps with her sister’s husband.

Rotchford is especially affecting as the diffident mortician’s assistant Kyle, who sells the necklace in order to put her mother in a nursing home.

The two relative newcomers, Katie Carey and Sarah Denison, proved every bit as talented and versatile. Carey is riveting as Stephanie, a harried mother of small children at the end of her rope. You can see the desperation in her face and hear it in her voice.

Denison caps the play off perfectly with a well-measured performance as Cindy, a large lesbian gravedigger looking for love in, as it turns out, all the right places. With her husky voice, her overalls and her penchant for Elizabethan poetry, she’s the character I’ll remember the longest from “String of Pearls.”

As for the script itself, I have a number of reservations. It contains a few too many contrivances – including a very convenient striped bass. One entire scene, involving a Parisian explosion, was simply baffling.

However, I do recognize that I am not the target audience for this play. It is indeed a woman’s play, and I am certain that it speaks more strongly to women than to men. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all learn something from it. And it certainly doesn’t diminish the pleasure in seeing five talented women create so many rich, deep characters.