Some fancy literary term ought to be coined – along the lines of "Entwicklungsroman" or "roman-á-clef" – to describe the kind of story that narrates the migration of an inanimate object from hand to hand amongst a number of characters. This subgenre has thrived for centuries. One of the earliest examples,"Adventures of a Guinea" (1760) by Charles Johnstone, which followed a gold coin all over the place in its circulation, spawned an entire mode of such tales. Some recent examples would include the 1998 film "The Red Violin" and E. Annie Proulx’s novel "Accordion Crimes" (1996). In both of them musical instruments are tracked across centuries of time, depicting sometimes disastrous consequences for their serial possessors. (Perhaps this might constitute a sub-subgenre to be dubbed "l’instrument maudit.")

The play "String of Pearls" (2005) by Michele Lowe is one of the latest applications of this old device. In it such a necklace, presented by a uxorious husband to his pliant wife after one exceptionally vigorous and memorable nuit d’amour, is thereafter followed in a 35 year odyssey from woman to woman to woman through a series of escapades involving bequeathment, loss, misplacement, theft, interment, exhumation, submersion, and – before the pearls at last miraculously wend their way back to the original owner – rediscovery in the belly of a fish.

This last astonishing detail, the apex of the drama’s confluence of coincidences, much resembles the sort of bizarre anecdote favored in Ripley’s "Believe It or Not!" Indeed, that popular funnypaper feature did once tell and illustrate the story of how in 1903 a Madame Eduigue Rereit, of Paris, France, lost a ring off her finger down her kitchen sink drain, only to recover it some days later whilst gutting a fish she had purchased at the market.

Coincidence is rife in the real world. (In a universe of nearly infinite possible combinations, it should be no surprise that many do manage to match up. And quantum physicists theorize that all particles are somehow linked.) But in fictional narratives, coincidence has fallen out of style since the days of Dickens and Fielding. And so, for many people the plot of Lowe’s play may appear preposterous. It did to me, even while I was enjoying it.

Yet though the contrived connections between pearls and women may sometimes strain credulity, the North Coast Repertory production, directed by Karen Carpenter, thrives on the playwright’s invention of fleeting incidents and snappy dialogue. And the four actresses, who play a total of twenty-seven characters, generate tremendous interest and fun with their many brief but vivid characterizations.

Kwana Martinez frames the drama with her natural and sympathetic portrayal of Beth, the one who initially receives the pearls from her satisfied spouse in 1969 and at last surprisingly recovers them at the age of 74 in 2004. Martinez’ uninhibited miming of Beth’s flabbergasting sexual acrobatics with her husband is refreshingly hilarious – including his continual refrain, as he commits ever more outrageous erotic antics upon her biddable flesh: "So you want a pearl necklace?"

Martinez also plays several other major and minor characters, including two more directly in the chain of pearl recipients, with entertaining variations of age and ethnicity. The theme of Beth’s easygoing (but long dormant) sexual submissiveness is recapitulated near the play’s conclusion when, after decades of celibate widowhood, she allows herself to be seduced by a 300-pound lesbian lover 29 years her junior.

Christy Yael very effectively plays a number of characters aged 7 to 45, but is at her best portraying a couple of weary and careworn women in the pearl chain-gang – one, Ela, a hardworking single mom; the other, Kyle, an exhausted mortician’s assistant and sole caretaker of her senile, wheelchair-bound mother. The slight Yael convincingly gives the impression of someone gaunt with sleeplessness and overwork.

Jennifer Seifert also plays the usual selection of impressionistic walk-ons and major pearl-bearing roles. Her lanky good looks lend smouldering credence to the part of Helen, a roundheeled and amoral political consultant. But Seifert’s most memorable characterization is as longsuffering Abby, a capable professional woman who seethingly endures her dismissive mother’s sarcastic taunts – until Abby is able to wreak a darkly funny and poetically just posthumous revenge on her deceased mother.

Crystal Sershen plays several notable parts, including Abby’s mockingly sniffy (and ultimately dead) mother. Her most sympathetic and touching role, however, is as Cindy, the hefty, lonely, lovelorn lesbian gravedigger who finally ends up with Beth – their relationship sealed by an unexpected mutual passion for the minor Tudor poet Sir Edward Dyer (1543-1607). Yet another coincidence – though I think a small one.

The production is, perforce, a very abstract one, with a few stark and flexible bits of scenery provided by Marty Burnett, lighted suggestively by Michael Paolini, and with sound design the work of Chris Luessmann. Costumes, of which there were of course many – both specific and adaptable – were the good work of designer Michelle Hunt.

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