String of Roles

People distrust actors: so flighty, so shifty. How can you tell if you’re getting their actual selves? You just can’t trust ’em. (Then we ourselves go to Halloween parties, put on costumes and play roles. We’re so flighty, so shifty.)

But audiences love multiple-role plays like Michele Lowe’s String of Pearls, with (in Susan Hardie’s production at the Civic, through Nov. 15) five actresses playing a half-dozen roles apiece: What will she look like this time? Will her hair be different? Will her gestures, accent, body language seem distinct?

Lowe has built in what might be called script parallels: perceptible through-lines in the parts that a given actress performs in String of Pearls. (It’s a comic drama about how the lives of 27 women intersect with a particular family-heirloom piece of jewelry.) Lowe’s play, in other words, suggests that women who seem utterly different aren’t really all that far apart.

And while director Susan Hardie’s production has divvied up the roles in a different way than Lowe’s script calls for, it will still display the similar goals sought by dissimilar women.

FORGING CAREERS: Amy already has a successful career in medicine, but she’s preoccupied with wedding preparations — so it’s not the best time for her to have misplaced the pearls that belong to her elderly mother Beth. Lowe intended for the same actress to play both Amy and Helen, who’s ambitious and harried and in politics — and who sleeps around to advance her career. The same actress, perhaps, will show up later as Jitters, a young art student just starting her career while living on Valium.

ACHIEVING INDEPENDENCE: Another trio of characters want to strike out on their own paths. Beth (whom we see as both grandmother and newlywed) is humiliated by her husband, learns to love him, then loses him and needs to learn how to live alone. Josianne, a hotel maid, finds the string of pearls but then discovers her husband’s greed. Victoria, a wealthy woman who inherits the pearls in an unusual way, tries to break free of upper-class restraints.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES: The actress who plays Linda, a brave cancer victim, resonates later with Stephanie (who’s trying to balance being a mommy and being an architect) and Dora (a Jewish ballet dancer who’s jolted into an awareness of anti-Semitism).

The script parallels are reinforced by the actor parallels: Seeing the same living, breathing actress jump from matron to maid, from femme fatale to toddler, is itself a lesson in breaking down stereotypes.

String of Pearls showcases women’s lives at Spokane Civic Theatre through Nov. 15 on Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30  pm and on Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets: $16; $7.50, student rush. Visit spokanecivictheatre.com or call 325-2507.