THEATER REVIEW : HENLEY PLAY BURSTS WITH WIT, CHARM

Beth Henley’s play “The Miss Firecracker Contest” is about beauty--the kind that wins contests, the kind that doesn’t and the kind that never even gets considered in the first place.

Each kind can be a heartbreaker. The San Diego Actors Theatre production playing at the Bowery Theatre through May 30 delivers that feeling with humor and charm.

At 24, Carnelle Scott is in her last year of eligibility for the Miss Firecracker competition in Brookhaven, Miss. She’s not the most self-confident of contestants. She thinks she’s pretty--but she’s not quite sure. And she knows she ruined her reputation during a period of low self-esteem when she slept with any man who was interested.

She figures that if she wins the contest, everything will be made right again. People will respect her. She will be a little like her beautiful cousin, Elain, who won the Miss Firecracker contest at 19 and, adding success to success, married a rich man and moved to the big city of Memphis.

Carnelle pursues her all-American dream in an all-American red-, blue- and silver- starred costume she designed for the talent portion of the competition (Yes, she plans to tap dance and twirl a baton to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner”). Sewing her outfit is a cheerful, severely myopic seamstress named Popeye Jackson who has no doubts about her looks--she knows she hasn’t got any.

Carnelle, Elain and Popeye are the backbone of the action, much like the three sisters in Henley’s first play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Crimes of the Heart.” They require strong performances. They get them.

As Carnelle, Anne Dauber captures the touching moment between gawkiness and grace. Tall and reed-like, she walks with a slight hunch as if protecting herself against some particularly nasty winds.

Patricia Elmore fills Elain with the bored, slightly cheated feeling of a woman who has used her beauty to get all the things her mother told her she should want and now, realizes that for some strange reason she isn’t happy. The main thing her performance lacks is a subtly condescending attitude toward Carnelle, which would, in turn, lend energy to the Elain/Carnelle dynamic and, ultimately, make Carnelle’s ambivalence toward Elain more understandable.

It is Debi Friedland as Popeye, though, who steals the show. Like a strange sprite who has come from some airy, indefinite place, she has no thought of money or advancement or envy. She lives on wonder and, as Friedland plays her, with her little girl voice and mismatched clothes, is irresistible in her enthusiasm.

Richard Harrison’s direction is generally adept when dealing with the women, but not as successful with the men.

As Carnelle’s ex-lover, Mac Sam, Frederick Edmund comes off as a grubby vagrant, rather than as the romantically self-destructive seducer.

Elain’s brother, Delmount, is played by Jay Scott Lopp as an emotional pinball machine. Granted, he’s a volatile mix: part poet, part philosopher and part maniac who can smash his uncle in the head for being boring at the dinner table.

Still, a center should have been found--or invented--for him. And at the very least, he should not be allowed to coax Elain to leave her husband in the anxious tones of a lover, when what he really wants is to see his sister follow her own inner directives just as he is yearning to follow his.

Lori C. Coltrin’s sets are diffuse and unaffecting, particularly in the first act when the home should be cozily cluttered with old junk. Sean La Motte’s lighting and Lawrence Czoka’s sound work fine until the fireworks. Then the lighting gets confused and the explosive sounds fizzle.

Ingrid Helton’s costumes are effective. In keeping with the strength of this play, she is particularly good with the women: from the elegant Elain to Carnelle who aspires to be like Elain, to Popeye who evidently subscribes to the kamikaze school of fashion.

The greatest weakness of “The Miss Firecracker Contest” comes from an unexpected source: its similarity to Henley’s far more powerful “Crimes of the Heart.” With its almost parallel cast of characters, “Firecracker,” despite being the later work seems, oddly enough, like a younger, less-developed version.

And yet, taken on its own terms, this immensely likeable play, with its odd and interesting characters, is most certainly a winner, even if it doesn’t take first prize.

“THE MISS FIRECRACKER CONTEST” By Beth Henley. Director, Richard Harrison. Costumes, Ingrid Helton. Sound, Lawrence Czoka. Lighting, Sean La Motte. Sets, Lori C. Coltrin. Props, Erik Hanson. With Patricia Elmore, Anne Dauber, Debi Friedland, Jay Scott Lopp, Frederick Edmund and Laura Ganz. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sundays, through May 30. Produced by the San Diego Actors Theatre at the Bowery Theatre, 480 Elm St.