LA Review: 'Why We Have a Body'

Claire Chafee's comedy "Why We Have a Body" is a lighthearted fable, centering on four women, about love in all its permutations. Lili (Alex Sedrowski) is a private detective who specializes in investigating adulterous husbands yet falls in love with married woman Renee (Cathy Arden), whom she meets on an airplane. Lili's sister, Mary (Tanna Frederick), fantasizes about being Joan of Arc and dreams of female empowerment, which she seeks to achieve by robbing convenience stores, until her life of crime catches up with her. The two sisters long for a close-knit family, but their mother, Eleanor (Barbara Bain), is too busy exploring exotic places to have time for maternal responsibilities. There is also a quintet of musicians (David Abrams, guitar; Cooper Appelt, bass; Robert Humphreys, drums and percussion; Kyle O'Donnell, saxophone; and Trevor Steer, piano), who play Edward Auslender's eclectic score and interact with the actors.

Chafee has a knack for creating engagingly oddball characters and finding the humor in their eccentricities, but her disjointed narrative sometimes makes "Body" seem like a series of tenuously connected comedy sketches. Fredericks, who also directs, handles the individual scenes with perception and authority but doesn't deliver the necessary dramatic thrust to bind them together.

Sedrowski maintains a cool surface aplomb as Lili, who feels no qualms about seducing the hitherto heterosexual Renee and says that she became a private eye because no one has attempted to investigate her mystery. Frederick combines wistfulness with pugnacity as the gun-toting Mary. Bain finds ample comedy in the adventurous, peripatetic,self-indulgent Eleanor, and Arden supplies Renee with vivacity and charm in the play's least-developed role.

Designer Joel Daavid provides the huge unit set, which nimbly combines a cave, an office, an airplane interior, a bedroom, and a bandstand.

Presented by the Rainbow Theatre Company, Edgemar Center for the Arts, and Alexandra Guarnieri at Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica. March 2–April 29. Thu.–Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. (310) 392-7327 or www.edgemarcenter.org.