Valley Weekend : THEATER REVIEW : Bring a Hankie: ‘Turtle Tears’ Does Its Best to Tug on the Heartstrings : Despite a plodding pace and frequent scene changes, the play garners strength from the emotional allure of its characters.

As its title suggests, the hankies come out late in “Turtle Tears” at the Taber Theatre. But since Suthern Hicks seems to have been inspired by the comedy-into-melodrama formula of “Steel Magnolias,” you know those tears are going to come. It’s just a question of how long it will take to happen.

Pretty long, under Allison Bergman’s direction. Of course, Bergman isn’t helped by Hicks’ elongated scene structure (six scenes in Act I, three scenes in Act II), which tends to halt the play’s momentum just when things are in a rhythm. Seven blackouts interrupting some languorously played scenes is not the definition of compelling.

With all that, Hicks has written a character-driven play uncommonly dependent on strong audience attachment to the (mostly) women on stage. If you’re willing to stick it out with Hicks’ gals--and don’t mind the manipulations along the way--”Turtle Tears” produces an emotional pull.

At Desi’s (Peggy Cozzi) place in the southeast Arizona desert, it’s an open debate whether she will be able to hold on to her property, now that she’s a widow and her scheming daughter Margie (Kathleen Jean Klein) has assumed power of attorney. Desi’s only friend, Azora (Bette Rae), shares the place with her--and when push comes to shove, can live nowhere else.

Margie and Azora’s daughter, Bethany (Dorothy A. Gallagher), up the melodramatic ante with some predictable complications, including a perfunctory, paint-by-numbers confrontation about incest. Hicks can’t really juggle all of the complications he wants in his play, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

He brings on, for example, a friendly Mexican laborer named Jimmy (Joe Camareno) to help Desi around the house and to deliver comfy Christian homilies that prove irrelevant to the drama.

“Turtle Tears” only begins to delve into the unspoken presumptions that exist between mothers and daughters; Margie isn’t just a money-grubber out to destroy Desi’s attachment to her desert land, but the play doesn’t let Margie make her case. It stacks the deck when it should be trying for some truth.

The performances often telegraph who we should and shouldn’t be rooting for, so Cozzi is a warm but crusty desert mama while Klein milks Margie’s nastiness. Gallagher plays the painfully sensitive Bethany better with looks than words, but Rae is lucky to play the one character who has to go through some wringing changes--watch her tough exterior just melt away.

The Taber’s performing space is an awkward church auditorium, but Hicks’ set design helps create a trailer park mood, though Jean Sportelli’s lights remain bright regardless of the time of day.

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DETAILS

* TURTLE TEARS: Taber Theatre, 4301 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Toluca Lake. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 8. $12. (818) 508-7084.