Convening a Solid ‘Meetin’s on the Porch’

Donald MacKechnie’s period drama “Meetin’s on the Porch,” which concerns the lifelong friendship of three women in the rural Midwest, is a double-edged soap opera that offers plenty of predictable heartache, while also making a sly statement about the status of women in a man’s world.

First and foremost, however, MacKechnie’s play is an epic of female bonding, brimming with more estrogen than an “Oprah” retrospective. In the current production at the Little Victory, director Maria Gobetti and her cast balance the sentimentality with cleareyed expertise.

The action commences in 1917, when the play’s heroines are young and frisky. Hard-working, hardheaded Amy (Randi Lynne Weidman) is the rock-solid pragmatist of the group. Haley (Karen Marie Seigel), a high-spirited clotheshorse (courtesy of Liam O’Brien’s striking costumes), jazzes up her staid pals--sometimes to a fault. Prim and proper Jenny (Kim LeBlanc) acts as gentle peacemaker when the high-stepping Haley steps on Amy’s feelings.

The entire play transpires on a weather-beaten country porch, well realized in Timothy Ford Hannon’s set design. In the first scene, Jenny confides that she may be pregnant by her ardent young admirer, who has since gone off to fight the Kaiser. It’s the first of many revelations in MacKechnie’s leisurely yarn, which covers seven decades and plenty of plot twists. For these women, their fiercely loyal friendship defines the course of their lives, more than marriage, or child rearing, or the sweep of history.

The story holds few surprises. The novelty lies in MacKechnie’s modernistic take on his rural characters, who refreshingly defy the condescending regional stereotypes to which writers so frequently resort. The final scene, in which the playwright over-tips into bathos and the actresses into caricature, is an exception in an otherwise assured staging.

*

“Meetin’s on the Porch,” Little Victory, 3324 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Indefinite. $18. (818) 841-5421. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.