A pair of quirky contemporary adult siblings bearing more than a passing resemblance to Anne and Emily Brontë generate dramatic sparks aplenty in Jami Brandli’s Sisters Three, that is until Charlotte shows up near the end and the Inkwell Theater World Premiere turns from a mostly quite absorbing two-hander to a solo performance that goes off the deep end … way off.

 It’s Christmas Eve and Anne (Kara Hume) is a woman possessed, both by her Instagram account and by the need to put the finishing touches on the two-person canoe she’s been constructing smack dab in the middle of the student housing studio apartment she’s currently sharing with her physics major grad student sister EJ (Dana DeRuyck).

What Anne’s Instagram and the nearly completed canoe have in common is #OperationRescueCharlotte, a plan the social media-obsessed youngest Brontë has concocted to bring eldest sister Charlotte (Robyn Cohen) back from the Gondol Island commune she retreated to six months ago upon the suicide death of the first-born Brontë, the booze-drugs-and-women-addicted Patrick, a rescue scheme Anne hopes will not only bring Charlotte back to the mainland but turn the youngest sister into an Internet star.

 Still, if there’s any Brontë likely to achieve worldwide fame (and a cool million dollars in the bargain), it’s EJ, but only if she can resolve the complex Riemann Hypothesis equation currently filling a blackboard inside her apartment.

EJ, unfortunately, has other things on her mind, namely the female research assistant with whom she recently shared a drunken holiday party kiss but who most likely doesn’t share EJ’s feelings given her hetero wedding plans.

Over the course of the first seventy-five-or-so minutes of Sisters Three’s hour-and-a-half running time, Anne and EJ prove as impossible to turn away from as a train wreck, a term that could just as easily describe one as the other.

 It’s when the sisters decide to play a childhood game that things begin to get bizarre, or at least for those like this reviewer who aren’t familiar with the peculiarities of the original Brontës, just one instance where a prominently placed Author’s Note might provide a much-needed primer into the women who inspired Sisters Three, another of them being the swordplay (adeptly choreographed by Collin Bressie) that suddenly turns Anne and Charlotte into Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. (Say what?)

 Still, whatever confusion the sisters’ game-playing may engender pales in comparison to the sudden, apparently otherworldly appearance of their older sister, soaking wet, face grimy, dead leaves in her hair, and eager to launch into a performance-art-style tale involving apples turned into hard cider, a couple of hippie swingers, and a two-headed bunny, an extended monolog that had this reviewer shaking his bewildered head.

 Before Sisters Three’s eleventh-hour derailment, however, there is much to appreciate and admire in Brandli’s latest, not the least of which are a couple of complex, damaged, utterly compelling characters brought to life by two of the finest young actresses in town under Annie McVey’s assured direction, and though Cohen is saddled with lines like “I denied myself nothing and I actually believed I saw god in a pile of pleasuring bodies,” you can’t take your eyes off her.

 Design kudos are shared by Lex Gernon (set) and Rebecca Carr (properties) for EJ’s cramped, Christmas-decorated one-room apartment and canoe, Joey Guthman (lighting) for subtly signaling when reality turns to fantasy, Allison Dillard (costumes) for the sisters’ character-defining outfits, and John Zalewski (sound) for some mood-enhancing underscoring.

Sisters Three is produced by Daniel Shoenman and Rosie Glen-Lambert. Karen Osborne is production stage manager and Jeffree Davis is assistant stage manager. David Schimmelman is technical director. Casting is by Lisa Pantone.

Post-performance conversations with cast members filled me in on some of what made the original Brontës tick, info that would have informed my appreciation of Sisters Three’s more baffling moments had I known it in advance, and as long as Anne and EJ remain in their contemporary reality, Brandli’s play works quite well indeed. Still, whatever she hoped to accomplish with Charlotte as deus ex machina escapes me.

VS. Theatre, 5453 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles.
www.inkwelltheater.com

–Steven Stanley
December 20, 2018
Photos: Rachel Rambaldi

Tags: Jami Brandli, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Inkwell Theater