From the Coloring Book

By * T.E. Kalem

Twigs is the modest title of a modest play that is modestly amusing. Playwright George Furth, who wrote Company's fine book, is skit-and short-story-minded--not the stuff from which sturdy drama is made. He outlines his Twigs' characters like figures in a child's coloring book, and he proceeds to crayon them onstage without depth.

Three of the playlets revolve around sisters, and the fourth concerns their mother, with all of the roles being played by Sada Thompson. The action of each is set in a kitchen some time during the day before Thanksgiving. The holiday creates an opportunity for the women to reminisce and sum up their lives.

Sister No. 1 is a widow who has just moved, and cartons of appliances are pyramided on the floor. Who should pop in but the divorced head of the moving firm? Figure out what happens when the lonely twain meet.

Sister No. 2 is a never-was ex-starlet whose career died on the cutting-room floor. Her husband and an old Army buddy sop up beer and run through the great sports exploits of the past three decades, but she tries to grab the spotlight by doing the dance that audiences never got to see. This is a wickedly funny parody of a typical '30s-'40s Hollywood dance number, and Thompson does it so perfectly that 2,000 palms thunderclap her.

Sister No. 3 and her husband have reached a silver wedding anniversary that obviously isn't polished. But if they've lost the magic, they've kept the mirth, at least until each begins quizzing the other about extramarital affairs. The mother of this trio is a salty old Irish Catholic biddy who has one dying wish: that her Dutch common-law husband make an honest wife of her before a priest.

None of the O. Henryesque twists would stir an audience much if Sada Thompson was not a masterly actress. Some 42 years ago, she was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and her apprenticeship has included years of regional repertory work, doing lead parts in The Three Sisters, Macbeth, The Rose Tattoo and plays of like caliber. Two seasons ago she won an award as best off-Broadway actress of the year, playing the bitter, slatternly mother in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

While she is ably supported by the rest of the cast and buoyantly directed by Michael Bennett, the co-director and choreographer of Follies, it is Sada Thompson who puts in shadings of voice and nuances of humor and emotion that salvage the script. Let us hope that Broadway is never so careless as to lose her.

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