Despite its Pulitzer-prize credentials, Beth Henley's melodrama Crimes of the Heart never struck me as a great American classic. And, after seeing both the summer '07 Williamstown revival and the current Off-Broadway transfer, it still doesn't.

Yet, as directed by Kathleen Turner, who as an actress knows a thing or two about dysfunctional relationships (most recently as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) I enjoyed my visit with the Magrath Sisters at Williamstown's Nikos Stage. That enjoyment owed a good deal to my seeing another play about three sisters, Paul Osborn's Mornings at Seven, the very same week at Berkshire Theatre Festival. Watching these two sets of sisters caught up in suddenly exacerbated tensions — Osborn's circa 1922 and Henley's much younger sisters living in post-Hurricane Camille Mississippi (1974) — added a wonderful touch of serendipidous synergy to my experience of both plays. If another Berkshire venue, Barrington Stage had put on The Three Sisters instead of Uncle Vanya, it would have been a third bit of unintended synergy since The Three Sisters is said to be Henley's inspiration for Crimes of the Heart.

Of course, the Roundabout revival has its own unplanned synergy with another trio of sisters —this time in the funny/sad dysfunctional household of Tracy Letts' new dysfunctional family drama, August: Osage County.

I liked the performances (both at Williamstown and in the current production) quite a bit more than Simon did, and excellent as Kali Rocha was as the busybody Chick Boyle, Jessica Stone is indeed marvelously obnoxious. The new design team recreates much of the look and feel of the WTF staging though Anna Louizos' set is more naturalistic than I recall, with less of a trip between refrigerator and stove. Natasha Katz's lighting adds to this warmer, cozier look. The set re-design may be a response by Turner to some of the negative comments on the more abstract WTF set —but I thought that went well with the overall wackiness. Since all but one of the actors had a chance to nail down their Southern accents last summer (and did so), dialect coach Deborah Hecht must have had an easy coaching job.

Actually, CurtainUp reviewed another revival of Crimes seven years ago. To read Les Gutman's enthusiastic take on that production go here; to read the full review of the Williamstown production go here.