‘ALUMNAE’: LESBIAN LOVE AND CONFLICT

It’s taken longer for lesbians to come out of the closet than gay men--about as long as it took for women’s liberation to really take hold. There’s drama in this. Jane Chambers’ “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove” touched on it, but better and less pandering is Sarah Dreher’s “Alumnae News (The Doris Day Years)” at Celebration Theatre.

Like a bloodhound, Dreher sniffs out the conflict: the pressure, as much from women as from institutions, to conform to a preordained sexual role.

The toughest conflict of all is internal. So it’s enough that Karen (Lori Huber) feels the collective weight of her Wellesley College chums and roommate Terry (Whitney Vale) to do her job--which is to get a husband. But when Stacey (Rose Marcario), a not-so-straight Wellesley woman, sends love signals Karen’s way, it’s simply beyond the pale for her.

Much of this is recalled from the looser ‘60s, when Karen works up the nerve to talk to Stacey after a 10-year silence. Dreher hasn’t worked out the story’s flashback/flashforward structure (nor has director Susan Bell worked out an interesting way to stage it). The first tussles between the supposedly older, wiser women possess an unfortunate, collegiate shrillness about them.

Beckett’s remark on how hard it is to write an honest line starts to haunt this play. But midway through the first act, Dreher manages to conjure up those lines. She even manages to draw Terry as a cartoon character and not dehumanize her.

Marcario’s Stacey is sarcastic and embittered, but conceals the inevitable pain too successfully. Vale’s comical imperiousness adds some resoundingly personal strokes to the cartoon. Huber’s Karen convinces only in Karen’s college youth.

Performances at 426 N. Hoover St. on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. through May 17. Tickets: $10, (213) 827-4257.