STAGE REVIEWS : 3 Faces of Eve : In ‘Patio’ and ‘Graceland’ at the Gem Theatre, playwrights Ellen Byron and Jack Heifner have created characters too heavy with quirks.

There’s something about Southern women that makes playwrights go goofy. It’s as if a spell--a cloud of unreason--settles over them as they create characters so heavy with quirks they can seem more cartoon than human.

Beth Hansen, with her eccentric nervous Nellie having hissy fits all through her works, has to be the prototype, but she’s not nearly the only one. Take Ellen Byron and Jack Heifner, for instance.

In the one-acts presented by Cal State Fullerton’s new Contemporary Repertory Theatre Company at the Gem Theatre (in repertory with John Murrell’s full-length “Waiting for the Parade”; see related review), we find three ladies and a girl, all afflicted by Southern peculiarity.

The more amusing, probably because the topic is so bizarrely familiar, is Byron’s “Graceland.” By the title, you can guess that Elvis is the centerpiece as Bev (Arlyn McDonald) and Rootie (Renee Simoneau) fight over who’s going to be the first to set foot in the everlasting one’s mansion when it is initially opened to the public.

Bev arrives first, pitching a pup tent by the famous music staff gate and placing a comforting assortment of Elvis junk nearby. She’s a middle-aged type, a little soft in the middle and prone to wearing bad wigs. Bev’s got a tart mouth, but she’s all mush inside.

Rootie comes a little later, plopping down on a pillow and eating hard-boiled eggs from a paper bag. While Bev is obsessed with Elvis as the usual love/fame/sex object, Rootie sees him as something more.

In a satiric but muddled metaphor for the transcendence of stardom and idolatry, Byron has Rootie envision Elvis as a spiritual conduit to her brother Beau, who died in Vietnam. She needs to get in the mansion first so she can commune with Elvis and ask him to contact Beau.

Bev and Rootie fight, but eventually become pals. Rootie doesn’t need a friend, though; she needs a therapist.

Byron is making a point--about the danger of replacing real feelings for real things with real feelings for unreal symbols--but it’s a pretty tired idea.

The sisters in Heifner’s “Patio” are both idiosyncratic, especially the talkative, high-strung Pearl (Karlie Cook). She worries about lots of stuff, in particular how her going-away party, done in a Snoopy motif, for her sister Jewel (Kathleen Dunn) will turn out.

Jewel is leaving town to become something better. She’s slightly more sensible than Pearl, with a real career as a hairstylist. (Why is it that these Southern women are always beauty-shop types? Why not a Southern meter maid, or a Southern hot-dog vendor?)

Anyway, they squabble about who Pearl’s husband loved more, Pearl or Jewel, but end up showing how much they care for each other in a creamy denouement.

Both playlets are directed by Cherie Brown in a comic, eager style that escalates the nuttiness of the characters. The acting is also too hyperactive for its own good.

‘PATIO’ and ‘GRACELAND’

A Cal State Fullerton Contemporary Repertory Theatre Company production of the one-acts by Jack Heifner and Ellen Byron. Directed by Cherie Brown. With Kathleen Dunn, Karlie Cook, Renee Simoneau and Arlyn McDonald. Sets by Todd Mufatti. Lighting by Susan Hallman. Sound by John R. Fisher. Makeup by Gary Christensen. Costumes by Juan Lopez. Plays today, Saturday and April 20, 26 and 28 at 8 p.m., and April 22 at 3 p.m. at the Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Tickets: $5 to $7. (714) 773-3371.