‘Maxine’ talks, lives to shock

Maxine Levine has a filthy mouth and says the most ridiculous things. She likes to shock people and call her son-in-law fat. On her first meeting with eligible bachelor Arthur, she takes a lusty bite out of a Krispy-Kreme donut and asks the new widower if he had sex on a recent date.

From Tennessee Williams’ Amanda Wingfield to Alfred Uhry’s Miss Daisy, the South’s dramatic literature is overgrown with steel magnolias. In “Managing Maxine,” the new romantic comedy at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta playwright Janece Shaffer creates a different kind of Southern mama, a successful author and teacher who speaks candidly about foreplay and orgasms and has the chutzpah to go after the man she wants.

So what if she’s turning 71?

For her third Alliance Theatre world premiere (following 2006’s “Bluish” and 1999’s “He Looks Great in a Hat”), Shaffer takes on senior courtship, foundering midstream marriages, grieving children and the heartbreak of feeling young but looking old. Maxine’s liberation and youthful joie de vivre is for her a source of personal pride and the impulse of this sweetly affecting but overly ambitious play.

As the tone flickers from frothy to confrontational, Shaffer provides no less than three generations of sexual dysfunction: Maxine (played to the hilt by Jana Robbins); daughter Emmie (Courtenay Collins) and son-in-law Larry (Larry Larson); and granddaughter Marcy (who remains offstage). By the looks of things, sexual adventurousness seems to skip generations. While Maxine and her teenage granddaughter are boy crazy, Emmie’s marriage has stagnated.

That’s probably enough material for a play.

But as it turns out, Arthur (the wonderful Ross Bickell) has a newly separated daughter Ivy (Courtney Patterson) who is still grieving for her mom. When Ivy catches Maxine doing a little geisha role-playing in her dad’s living room, things get tense.

What’s interesting here is the way Arthur, a federal judge, becomes the nurturing father-figure (how modern!) and Maxine becomes the judge, attacking her children, criticizing her friends (including Judy Leavell’s hysterical Joanne, who is happy to be old) and generally acting like a jilted teenager. The most powerful scene is the one in which Maxine stops talking, takes off her clothes and looks in the mirror. She’s devastated, and the audience is devastated for her. Ivy’s vexations with life, on the other hand, come across as shrill and uninteresting, while Emmie, thanks to Collins, reads like a real and natural person.

Director Susan V. Booth does an admirable job of smoothing out its creases, but the play itself works against her.

Though Joseph Tilford has designed a tri-level set that functions as Maxine’s condo, Emmie’s kitchen and Authur’s place, the action gets cluttered on the sidelines. Scenes compete with one another.

Comedy is a matter of taste. But Shaffer’s idea that Jews love to talk about food gets stale after a few bites. Salmon spread, chicken and rice, jello molds, Krispy- Kreme, lamb chops, birthday cake. All right, already. Arthur brings Maxine “fancy fruit,” a sweet touch that recalls Fraulein Schneider and Herr Shultz in “Cabaret.” But Shaffer guilds the fig.

Shaffer sets up laughs like an old-fashioned sitcom writer, sprinkling her congealed-salad concoctions with a few too many nutty characters and high-carb one-liners. That said, lonely Joanne and Arthur’s sex-starved friend Louis (Howard Elfman) are delightful, people we recognize from the grocery store and golf course.

“Managing Maxine” is a tough call. Shaffer has a genuine talent for writing about the people she knows, but in this case, she has trouble keeping her story on track. As the Alliance’s sole, 40th anniversary season offering by an Atlanta playwright, “Managing Maxine” is a mixed bag. It’s funny that a smaller show downstairs on the Hertz Stage —- by a group of comedians from Chicago, no less —- probably has more to say about Atlanta culture than this home-picked peach. All that said, I do hope Maxine and Arthur live happily ever after.

THEATER REVIEW

“Managing Maxine”

Grade: B-

Through Nov. 2. $15-$45. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.

Bottom line: Home-grown comedy is a bit uneven, but nicely sweet, and tart.