RADIO REVIEW : Alarm Clock’s Chekhov Series Off to Strong Start

The actors who have banded together under the name Alarm Clock hope to prepare readings of all 202 short stories by Anton Chekhov. They have chosen their quizzical appellation as a tribute to the journal of the same name that was among the first to publish Chekhov’s work.

They kick off this ambitious project at 10 tonight on KCRW-FM’s (89.9) “Evening Playhouse” with three tales: “The Inadvertence,” “Enemies” and “The Chorus Girl.” The first and third are small vaudevilles, comic incidents heightened by the unforeseen play of human foibles. The middle one, “Enemies,” is a crafty dissection of the contrariness of human events, rich in the detailed, clumsy reversals of fortune of two men plunged in separate tragedies.

Directed by Rene Auberjonois and read by Joe Spano, Ethan Phillips, Angela Paton and Auberjonois, “The Inadvertence” is the slender story of a man who has one vodka too many at the birth of his child. The final drink has consequences as funny as they are revealing of the silly, self-centered frustrations and glorifications that play crucially into daily life.

“The Chorus Girl,” directed by Fionnula Flanagan and featuring Marian Mercer, Teri Garr, Spano and Auberjonois, focuses on a confrontation between a cheap chorus girl and her married lover’s wife.

The wife, who announces that her husband is wanted for embezzlement and lays the blame for his misconduct at the chorus girl’s feet (or other parts of her anatomy), insists on a return of sundry gifts, including some not even made by this man. It ends up with the girl scolded by both husband and wife for their own misguided behavior.

This may be only good for a laugh, but in Chekhov, no matter how slender the premise, it is the depth of seriousness with which the characters view themselves that unleashes the comedy.

Not so with “Enemies.” Again directed by Auberjonois, Blythe Danner narrates the moving tale of a doctor whose child has just died of diphtheria and who is pressed into service by a man whose wife may be just as desperately ill.

David Dukes and Lawrence Pressman portray the men. The brocaded texture of the writing and the exquisite emotional detail don’t prepare us for an ending in which events alter reactions and white hot anger supplants grief, making mortal enemies of the men.

Production is excellent, but the stellar achievement is Chekhov’s.

Series is based on Constance Garnett translations and dedicated to memory of Georgia Brown, an Alarm Clock member who died last month. It’s an impressive start.