Comedy, Staging Fall Short in ‘Sisters 3’

Michele Palermo’s “The Sisters 3” at the Coast Playhouse is a send-up of Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters” that shoots for wacky but woefully misfires.

The play is set in a Burbank diner owned by boozy Marcelle (Palermo), spacey Isabelle (Heather McClurg) and sweet-but-lonely Gabrielle (Lisa Chess), who gained fame as child actors on the long-running ‘70s sitcom “The Sisters 3.” Adult life hasn’t been kind to the siblings, reduced to waiting tables in their ‘70s-themed restaurant. However, under the buoyant influence of motivational guru Andrew Plymouth (Ivan Allen), himself a former child star, the waitresses three take another stab at stardom.

Marco De Leon’s wonderful diner set, all ghastly pastels and floral appliques, is the perfect setting for comedy, but little that is amusing transpires, and less actually happens. Non sequiturs abound, motivations wander freely afield, and a late-breaking hostage crisis fails to muster up any actual dramatic tension.

Despite its plethora of savvy show biz references, the play is itself a painfully unfunny sitcom, while Scott Segall’s shallow staging panders for laughs that don’t come. The actors are uniformly efficient, but the plot is so limp, all the crisp comic timing in Televisionland couldn’t save it. You’d really rather be in Moscow. In winter. Naked.

*

* “The Sisters 3,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 6. $10-$20. (323) 650-8509. Running time: 2 hours.