Much like the fat girl who makes a joke about the size of her ass the first time you meet her, String of Pearls gets the jizz joke out of the way in the first 15 minutes. It was a smart move on the part of playwright Michele Lowe to go ahead and say what we were all thinking (well, perhaps not the Sunday matinee crowd—more than a few people exclaimed “I’d never heard that term before!” during intermission). In fact, the purchase of the titular string of pearls, a necklace that bounces from owner to owner over this play’s 35-year, two-continent span, was originally inspired by the sexual term—by a husband’s gratitude, after years of marriage, at receiving his wife’s permission to mix it up in the bedroom a bit.
Once the bawdy bedroom humor is out of the way, String of Pearls settles into just about what you’d expect from a show that bills itself as a “quick-witted and kaleidoscopic observation of the undeniably feminine experience.” Four actresses, all tremendously talented, play 27 different characters, following the pearls from owner to owner as they are lost and found, gifted and stolen. As the string of pearls passes from woman to woman, disparate stories line up like… the simile escapes me. It should come as no surprise that the rather labored structural conceit comes full circle in the end—playwright Lowe’s got a sense of humor, but she’s also got a mile-wide sentimental streak bounded on either side by an emotional quicksand pit. Whether in the hands of an African maid or a Manhattan housewife, the necklace gravitates toward the most drama-laden circumstances in these women’s lives—adulterous husbands, dying mothers, long-lost children, cancer.
String of Pearls functions best as a showcase for the women in the cast, all of whom demonstrate extraordinary range and versatility—Amaya Villazan is particularly adept at portraying characters that would initially seem far outside of her range, but Vana O’Brien, Sarah Lucht, and Elizabeth Huffman are all equally good, and it’s a pleasure to see actors of their caliber working together. Ultimately, this is a smushy, feel-good affair, surprisingly tolerable for what it is—a cliché-riddled script designed to make your mother cry, with just enough dirty jokes to keep you entertained.