Bette Davis Ain't for Sissies

Writer-performer Jessica Sherr's naive 50-minute one-woman play takes place on the night of the 1940 Oscar ceremonies. By accident, an early edition of the Los Angeles Times has printed the winners, so Bette Davis knows that she is not going to triumph for her performance in "Dark Victory," losing to Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," a role Davis had once been promised. Davis apparently had to be convinced to stay at the awards ceremony by her mother. Sherr posits that she went home, and her play imagines what might have occurred had she done so.

Alas, "Bette Davis Ain't for Sissies" is not remotely persuasive. For starters, Sherr and director-dramaturge Theresa Gambacorta fail to answer the most important question of any one-person show: To whom is the character talking?, which results in awkwardly unmotivated hopscotching through "Bette's memories," as the program puts it. Sherr neither looks nor sounds like the legendary star, despite an erratic attempt at a self-consciously cultured New England accent. Worse, this Davis is suffused with self-pity, an emotion the flinty, iconoclastic, and ferociously intelligent original would have despised.
 
Self-presented as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center's Kabayitos Theatre, 107 Suffolk St., NYC. Aug. 12–28. Remaining performances: Sat., Aug. 13, 7 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 14, 3 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 18, 5 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 25, 9 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 28, 4:15 p.m. (866) 468-7619 or www.fringenyc.org.