Shelley Marshals ‘The Troops’ : Miniseries: Shelley Long handles drama on multiple personalities deftly, flipping from character to character.

Mean Joe is a big black man who protects the children, Lady Catherine is stuffy, Sister Mary Catherine is a nun, Ten-Four knows how to cut a business deal--and they are all personalities of Truddi Chase.

A woman with multiple personalities brings out the best in actresses--Joanne Woodward in “Three Faces of Eve,” Sally Field in “Sybil” and now Shelley Long in “Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase,” a four-hour miniseries to air on ABC on Sunday and Monday.

Not only that, but the women afflicted in these dramas also seem to develop more and more personalities--Eve had three, Sybil had a batch and Truddi has so many of them she refers to them as “The Troops.” “Voices Within” is based on the book, “When Rabbit Howls,” by The Troops for Truddi Chase, written as part of Truddi Chase’s psychotherapy.

For Long, the role is a considerable stretch from Diane Chambers on “Cheers,” and she handles it deftly, flipping from character to character.

The Troops first come to Truddi’s rescue when she is 2 years old and assaulted by her sadistic stepfather in a cornfield. He’s a monster who enjoys subjecting her to torture and sexual abuse and the worse things get, the more Troops appear.

The show starts with the adult Truddi, who lives in Minneapolis, tracking down a man named Paul Schmidt in a small town in Upstate New York and telephoning her psychiatrist, played by Tom Conti, that she has found him and will kill him.

She boards an airplane and during the trip she and the viewer travel back in time to her brutal childhood. “Flicks,” as she calls them, are brief memories of that time. Then there are the blackouts, and the voices, some of whom talk to each other. The one called Rabbit Howls goes back to what her stepfather did to her pet white rabbit.

As a young adult, she applies for a job at an ad agency owned by John Rubinstein, who falls in love with her and whom she marries.

There are problems in the marriage, and they become increasingly severe after Truddi has a baby, a daughter named Page. At the hospital, she obviously doesn’t even remember the baby’s name.

Norman, her loving husband, becomes unable to cope with her peculiarities, her strange shifts of mood and personality, her frequent shrewishness interspersed with baby talk. Eventually he can’t take any more and the marriage breaks up.

Finally she seeks help from a hot line, speaking first to a police officer (Alan Fudge) and then to a psychiatrist he recommends.

The doctor wants to find Truddi among The Troops, but he is told that Truddi died and that The Troops held a wake for her. “Those who could cried,” she says, “and Rabbit howled.”

At the end of the miniseries, Truddi finally confronts the stepfather.