There's something strange about Eve Harrington.

When we first meet her, she seems shy and modest, even mousy. Then Eve says she's seen the same play every night for weeks. She idolizes the leading actress, Margo Channing. She sounds ... obsessed.

I suspect that, if the time of the play "All About Eve" were today instead of 1951, Eve would soon be slapped with a restraining order.

But this is postwar America -- apparently a less suspicious time -- and so Eve enters the inner sanctum of the theater elite, slowly revealing a manipulative streak and a relentless, destructive ambition.

It seems fitting that the first offering from Madison's new professional troupe, Forward Theater Company, would be about the theater itself. Skillfully staged by artistic director Jennifer Uphoff Gray as a succinct, 90-minute radio play with prominent microphones and scripts in hand, it shows the fledgling company of veteran performers has great promise.

As icy Eve, Molly Rhode maintains a sense of cool control in contrast to Margo's (Colleen Burns) quick temper. Shrewd and calculating, Rhode can make her delicate features seem pinched in a furious rage or benign and open as she plots her next move.

Burns' aging actress masks her growing insecurity with wisecracks ("Heaven help me," she says, "I love a psychotic"). She slurs into drunkenness so naturally it's uncanny, using her voice instead of her body to swan about and switching to a nasal tone when reading a derisive column.

Sarah Day as Karen Richards, Margo's best friend, seems more comfortable with the stylized language of '50s movies than Burns, though both are a pleasure to watch in the throes of high melodrama. Day plays Karen as caring and a bit naive, bursting into nervous giggles to conceal what she thinks is a guilty conscience.

A surprisingly delightful turn comes from Celia Klehr in a small role as Birdie Coonan, Margo's assistant. Birdie is no-nonsense, handling Margo's dramatic outbursts with wry humor ("When she gets like this, all of a sudden she's playin' Hamlet's mother").

Under Uphoff Gray's direction, no one hues too closely to the famous movie with Bette Davis (thank goodness). But there are extraneous characters, and some of the portrayals make the script ring false.

Michael Herold plays playwright Lloyd Richards as a genial, loyal guy, not the womanizer who would make Eve confident of getting her claws in him. Richard Ganoung is a fine actor but feels miscast here as celebrated director Bill Sampson, without the worldly cockiness the script implies.

Gail Brassard's costumes subtly evoke an era in the absence of a fully realized set. Announcer Karen Moeller shimmers in a bronze, full-skirted dress, and Eve's slender red silhouette points to her confidence as well as her dramatic aspirations.

The entire evening is underscored by a quintet of musicians: four strings and Jack Forbes Wilson on piano. The music sets a mood and gives a stronger sense of place (inside a '50s radio studio) than anything else, from the carefully enunciated dialogue to dated commercials for Lux laundry soap.

Though a radio play isn't the kind of thing to blow an audience away, "All About Eve" is a solid start for Forward. Given the enthusiasm in the packed Playhouse on Saturday night, it's clear this is a welcome addition to the Madison theater scene.

LISTEN

Forward Theater's production of Lux Radio Theater's "All About Eve" will be broadcast at 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22, on Old Time Radio Drama (970 AM or 90.9 FM).

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