The Tennessee Waltz

Entering the psyches of Tennessee Williams’ best-known heroines and relating them to contemporary life, “Four Roses” at Actors’ Gang proves both rewarding and challenging. But to appreciate this distinctive original work for what it is, it’s perhaps necessary to recognize upfront what it is not.

First, it is not the Julia Cameron substance-abuse play of the same name running at the Century City Playhouse in an unfortunate coincidental tournament of “Roses.” This is every inch an Actors’ Gang creation: edgy, outrageous and bending the rules at every turn.

Just as important, this “Four Roses” is not a play by or about Tennessee Williams, although it uses the playwright’s characters as a point of departure. Through a striking mix of traditional dramatic excerpts, autobiographical monologues and performance art, a quartet of versatile actors presents meditations on the sensibilities of four feminine archetypes. Not in the same league with Williams’ writing, but effective nonetheless.

The piece originally grew out of a workshop effort in which each actor explored a personal connection to the Williams role in which she’d been cast. For Patti Tippo, it was Blanche DuBois’ tragic allegiance to romantic illusion over brute reality in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Evie Peck maps her dating insecurities to the fragile shyness of Laura Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie.” Cynthia Ettinger relates her ticking biological clock to Maggie’s fertile sensuality in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Kate Mulligan builds the emotional repression of “Summer and Smoke’s” Alma Winemiller into a haunting narrative about perversions of truth--things we say that should never be said, and things we should have said but never did.

Using minimal props and lighting and a boombox for incidental music, director Tracy Young steers her capable cast through well-constructed segments punctuated with unexpected shifts of tone and theme. The most chilling subjects (a blood-smeared Mulligan’s descriptions of sexual abuse or Tippo’s fictional descent into an alcoholic’s mind games) interweave with flights of engaging whimsy (Peck parodying Laura’s glass-figurine menagerie with her collection of “All My Children” memorabilia or Tippo’s Blanche squeezing the air out of inflatable alien-doll lovers). Multiple supporting roles in each scene showcase the performers’ range (particularly Ettinger’s).

The show’s centerpiece, though, is a sequence in which the four “roses” enter silently and strike poses as Williams’ characters--the renditions are so exact they make the subsequent dialogue pastiche in some ways redundant. Some thought might be given to changing the order here--if ever there were a finale to answer Blanche’s yearning for magic over realism, that wordless portrait is it.

BE THERE

“Four Roses,” Actors’ Gang El Centro, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays, Fridays, 9 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 29. $12. (213) 655-TKTS. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.