SAYING that Play wrights Horizons’ lat est offering is like “The Golden Girls” with zingers about theology instead of geriatric sex is far from a dig: Watch just about any episode, and you’ll be reminded of how tightly scripted and devilishly acted the ’80s sitcom was – and how funny it remains.
In Evan Smith’s “The Savannah Disputation,” Dana Ivey and Marylouise Burke play Blanche and Rose, er, Mary and Margaret, two Catholic sisters sharing a home in the titular city. One fine day, perky evangelist Melissa (Kellie Overbey) knocks on their door. She’s out to convert Catholics, armed with pamphlets and the unerring sense that she’s always right when it comes to salvation.
Sweet, easily befuddled Margaret is thrown for a loop by Melissa’s arguments (“Good deeds will not get you into heaven. That’s one of the Catholic errors”), and she seems close to being seduced by the fundamentalist siren’s call.
Incensed, the forceful, opinionated Mary devises a plan: She invites Melissa to come back later, but also asks along her friend Father Murphy (Reed Birney). “We want you to crush her!” Mary instructs the priest.
Bring it on! By then we are primed for a battle royale, and the playwright delivers it, with a few welcome twists.
Despite its timidity in style and ambition, the show adds up to more than a mere Bible-study session peppered with laughs. Mary eventually
reveals chinks in her armor, and faith-based certainties turn out to be more fragile than expected.
Considering “The Savannah Disputation” deals with religion in a Southern setting, director Walter Bobbie (“Chicago”) successfully avoids cheap effects – no pronounced accents played for superior Yankee smirks here. But, as with all comedies, everything hinges on the cast.
Fortunately, this quartet is positively heavenly. Birney, probably relieved at being in a light-minded production after the harrowing “Bug” and “Blasted,” is a straight man with a spine, and Overbey manages to make her spiritual salesgirl a lot less ditzy – and obnoxious – than she could have been.
But it’s Ivey and Burke who run off with the show. Not only do they milk every last drop from Smith’s one-liners, but their virtuosic feats of physical comedy should be dissected in acting classes: Burke makes sitting on a couch funny. It’s hard to find more inspired manipulators on a New York stage – these two could make us believe in just about anything.
THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION
Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St.; 212-279-4200.