A Charity Case

Good actors can't escape bad plays, and unfortunately the talented Alison Fraser falls victim to that dictum in this disjointed, trite drama about an adopted teenager's quest for self. In an attempt to expose the hardships surrounding adoption, playwright Wendy Beckett resorts to the usual clichés: child identity crises, jealous adoptive mothers, and regretful birth mothers. The characters lack depth and distinction, and for a character-driven drama, this problem creates significant issues with dramatic flow.

Beckett calls the piece "a play about adoption from the adoptee's point of view," but the work seems to have very little to do with 17-year-old Deidre and her quest for acceptance and love. (She does have a random dream sequence that exploits her pain.) Much of the work comes from the perspective of Deidre's birth mother, Harpie, a typical 1960s hippie complete with an ostentatious blond wig, who chronicles her loss in impassioned monologues, which Alysia Reiner delivers passionately. Harpie struggles in a cagelike structure above David L. Arsenault's detailed, appropriately gloomy set, shrieking and watching over her long-lost child. Theresa Squire's period-appropriate costumes are fitting for a play set in a dressmaker's home.

Beckett has created a semi-captivating character in Deidre's adopted mother, Faith, made all the more real in Alison Fraser's winning performance. Fraser, known for her Tony-nominated work in "Romance/Romance" and "The Secret Garden," disappears into her character's narcissism and conflicted love as Faith struggles with raising an adopted teenage daughter while blindly longing for a love of her own. Deidre whines like any normal 17-year-old, and her feelings of neglect manifest themselves in trite ways, such as faking death and pretending to hurt herself. Jill Shackner looks the part of a naive young girl, but she makes Deidre's efforts to gain her self-absorbed adoptive mother's attention feel forced. I never understood why Faith adopts Deidre in the first place. Harpie gives up her daughter for conventional reasons: She was too young and naive to parent a child, and after a nervous breakdown, she was deemed an unfit mother. But Faith is a businesswoman, obsessed with her career as a designer, and as far as I can tell she was never married to the man with whom she adopted Deidre. She also always introduces Deidre as her "adopted" daughter, as if she wants nothing to do with her.

The play tries to tie up loose ends by having Faith proclaim her love, but it doesn't come across as genuine, despite Fraser's hard work. "It's never too late," she coos to her troubled daughter, but the very fact that she needs to say that means that, really, it is.

Presented by Pascal USA at the Clurman Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St., NYC. Nov. 2–20. Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250, or www.telecharge.com. Casting by Judy Henderson.