Don't mess with my little sister! (That's my job)

Everyone in Hazlehurst, Mississippi knows the three MaGrath sisters. The sisters whose mother hanged herself -- along with the family's yellow cat -- and received national coverage.

Lenny, Meg, and Babe, now adults, reunite due to their grandfather's impending death, and spend the next 24 hours wrestling with their dark past.

Crimes of the Heart, playing through March 27 at the McCarter Theatre Center, restages this dark southern comedy by Beth Henley. The play originally opened at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and was taken north to run at the John Golden Theater in Manhattan, where it won the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle award in 1981. The 1986 film adaptation won three Academy Awards.

The play takes place five years after Hurricane Camille slammed Mississippi in 1969, and seemingly also slammed right into the MaGrath family. At the time of their reunion for their grandfather's impending death, the youngest, Babe, is under indictment for the attempted murder of her husband; Meg is a failed singer who has been living in Hollywood; and the oldest, Lenny, has at 30 mostly given up on life and resigned herself to being a spinster.

Wild and reckless Meg was originally performed by a young Mary Beth Hurt in 1981, and Georgia Cohen storms the stage, making the character her own with her large physical frame, big appetites and sweeping gestures.

Younger sister Babe refuses to talk to her lawyer after her abusive husband is shot. She tells Meg, "Don't worry . . . jail's gonna be a relief to me, I can learn how to play my new saxophone."

Andromache Chalfant's set design creates a house and a home, with a painfully familiar kitchen: plenty of entrances, exits and a phone that lets the outside world invade. (Gazing at the faded yellow refrigerator, step stool, and gas range, one silver-haired patron said to his wife, "That looks like our kitchen.") A glimpse of the upstairs, with its drapes and soft lights, invites the audience to think about what else has taken place, out of scene.

Lenny, played by Mary Bacon, is the dutiful older sister. Shabbily dressed and plain, she was left to care for their elderly gradfather while the others went off to ruin their lives. Her cousin from hell, Chick Boyle, played fiendishly by Brenda Withers, does a show-stopping scene with a pair of panty hose as her small-town wickedness plays foil to the sisterly bonds, strong in spite of their sibling resentments.

Youngest sister Babe, an emotionally stunted 24-year-old with big doe eyes that resemble their late mother's, is played by Molly Camp. Her sisters quickly realize that her denial to discuss the shooting is because she is protecting someone -- one of the many revelations that give heft to the play's comedic one-liners.

Henley's script capitalizes on Lenny's martyrdom, Babe's charming murderous streak, and Meg's larger-than-life appetites. Director Liesl Tommy is able to get this ensemble to play up the laughs without losing the deeper pulse of family running through its big southern heart. She also lets the audience get a sense, that in spite of their differences, these sisters are listening to each other, and have been each other's shelter through the storm for their whole lives.

Lucas Van Engen plays Doc Porter, Meg's former boyfriend (he marries a woman from the north and now has "those two half-Yankee children") and Dustin Ingram plays Babe's young lawyer. Both actors have a tall order playing against the MaGrath sisters but they do well as love-sick puppies yapping at their heels.

Thirty years after its first premiere, Crimes of the Heart is still making a tart, but quenching pitcher of southern lemonade in Princeton.

“Crimes of the Heart” will run through March 27, 2011. For more information, visit www.mccarter.org or contact box office 609-258-2787 (258-ARTS).