Misdemeanors

A little bit of quirky goes a long way in the theater. Just look at Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart.”

The 1981 comedy tilts the spotlight on the Magrath sisters, a troubled trio that just can’t stop with the idiosyncrasies. They can be cute and mildly entertaining. They also can be annoying.

That’s the obstacle facing director Jack Millis at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse. How do you keep these noisy women and their noisy stories from devolving into shtick? For one thing, you try to make sure the cast has talent.

Millis, and the audience, are lucky. Even when Henley’s plot and characterizations take the actors down the hard road of tics and tantrums, his three actresses don’t often lose their footing. Lynn Reinert as woeful Lenny, Kathy Simmons as the nervy Meg and Adriana Sanchez as spacey Babe are plenty eccentric but not exhaustively so.

That’s saying something with “Crimes of the Heart,” which was a popular play before becoming a movie in 1986 starring Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton and Sissy Spacek. It falls in that category of Southern feminine humor--”Steel Magnolias” is another example--in which anything having to do with colorful women with rebel accents was considered charming and even relevant.

These days, it seems self-conscious. Even the plot, although relatively simple, feels forced. It opens with Lenny facing her 30th birthday, something she’s not thrilled about. But the big thing is that Babe just shot her senator husband. Then Meg shows up lamenting a singing career in Hollywood that isn’t working out. There’s a lot of gabbing about old times, good and bad.

As Lenny, Reinert is a halting mix of self-pity and barely concealed anger over her situation. She lets us know just how frustrated this particular Magrath sister is. There’s little hidden emotion with the outspoken Meg; Simmons shows us her animated side without turning Meg into a caricature.

*

Sanchez gives the most interesting performance and commands attention even when the play’s focus is elsewhere. At times, however, Sanchez takes Babe’s baby-doll mannerisms too far, which becomes distracting.

The technical side of this production is competent, with David C. Carnevale’s set of the Magrath homestead appropriately modest and rural.

BE THERE

* “Crimes of the Heart,” Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 661 Hamilton St. 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $8.50-$10. Ends Sunday. (949) 650-5269. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.