Rough cut FortyCarats doesn’t shine BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Want to stump someone with theater esoterica? Ask them what French farce, adapted by an American playwright, opened in New York with Julie Harris in the starring role and went on to become a film with Liv Ullmann in that slot? It’s a comedy called Forty Carats, adapted by Jay Allen from a piece by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. Westerly’s Granite Theatre is currently having a go at this play, which stuck around for two years (’68-’70) in the Big Apple, through June 8.

The plot is set in motion when a successful Manhattan real estate agent, Ann Stanley (Maria Sepe Tavarozzi), meets a young and handsome American, Peter Latham (Sean Cohane), while traveling in Greece. The two have a very romantic fling, but she gives him a fake name and phone number, so they don’t meet Stateside until one night when he shows up at her apartment to give her 17-year-old daughter Trina (Kimberly Ligouri) a ride to a party. Peter’s 22, you see, and Ann’s 40 (thus the "forty carats").

Ann’s mother, or "Grannie Maud" to Trina (Carol A. Forrest), lives with her daughter and granddaughter and is immediately taken with Peter, because she recognizes his moneyed heritage and wants him in the family in the worst way. Her matchmaking between him and Trina only brings him into Ann’s sphere more and more. Meanwhile Ann is being pursued by a wealthy client, Eddy Edwards (David Nolan Hicks), and by her ex-husband, Billy Boylan (Jude Pescatello). Each has his own agenda for spending time with Ann — Boylan’s broke and hopes to cash in on Edwards; the widowed Texan Edwards is looking to build a home with someone, but it turns out it isn’t Ann.

And all of this just takes us through the first half of the opening act. The play seems to go on and on, making the same points over and over. However, if the pacing were more lively, if the actors’ timing were crisper, if more of the ensemble looked as if they were inhabiting a character rather than just tossing lines here and there, then maybe the play itself could work.

Tavarozzi has some good moments, when you actually are drawn into her character’s turmoil over being pursued by a 22-year-old. But her perplexed, all-but-wringing-her-hands expression doesn’t have many variations. Cohane is similarly stiff, with not quite enough oomph to make us believe in his maturity. He exudes a certain boyish charm, but he doesn’t make credible the go-get-’em attitude Latham talks about, both in business and romance.

The two actors who seem the most at home in their roles are Pescatello, as the hovering ex-husband and down-on-his-luck actor, and Hicks, as the gosh-and-golly big-hearted oilman. We even grow fond of Pescatello’s character, for he is the one — not Grannie Maud — who makes the best matchmaker in the play.

Even so, there’s something slightly dated or off-the-mark about the play itself. Has this kind of French sensibility about the sexiness of "older women" gone out of style? Do the situations of the various lovebirds in the play no longer hold our interest, in light of what today’s sitcoms and reality shows put forth?

That’s partly it. But the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of director Arthur Pignataro. He doesn’t seem to have given his players enough guidance, nor has he pulled them together into a comic ensemble. Granted, they warm to their roles a bit more in the second act, just enough to ignite some interest in the final outcome. But I wish he’d lit a fire under them.

With seven scenes in the first act and six in the second, the set changes seem endless. The idea of having Ann’s office at one end of the stage, with a folding wall to change the wall color and door configuration is clever, but the moving of furniture each time becomes wearisome.

Perhaps the actors will grow more comfortable with their roles and their timing will get snappy. Both factors would definitely increase the comic effect of Forty Carats. As it is, it’s too much of a diamond-in-the-rough to be entertaining.