Keilly McQuail and Ben Otto. Photo by Bailey Carr.

Although Debutante is definitely played for laughs, filled as it is with earnestly quirky characters, the play was actually inspired by the biography of Barbara Hutton, the Depression-era "poor little rich girl" debutante, whose story has been cited over the years as an example of how money isn't everything.

Annie Tippe, who is credited with creating the show as well as directing it, worked closely with the playwright in shaping the work for a contemporary audience—or at least as contemporary as the mid-1980s when musical tastes ran to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and favored TV fare included the popular prime time soap Dynasty, both of which greet the audience as they enter the venue.

Although the three debutantes-in-training—Brenda, Frankie, and Barbara (last name, Sutton; that's Hutton but with an "S," in case you missed it!) clearly are children of wealth, a real strength of the play is that it does not fall into the obvious jokes about upper class foibles or greed. Instead, the humor is character driven. Visible just beneath the surface are the scabs and scars encountered by teenagers who are pretty much left to raise themselves while their parents are caught up in their social commitments. In a different milieu, these would be the "Socs" in S. E. Hinton's coming-of-age novel The Outsiders, a book the girls may very well have read in middle school.

For a certain subset of women of this social class, rituals and rites of passage like those associated with debutante balls provide a certain comforting and defining anchor. As models of such women, we have Barbara's grandmother (Rochelle Slovin), whom we see briefly dancing by herself to Fred Astaire's rendition of "Cheek to Cheek" as she recalls a more glamorous past, and Ms. Peasgood (Liza de Weerd), who has been given the responsibility of preparing the girls for the upcoming Debutante Ball.

For Ms. Peasgood (somehow, I think she might refer to herself as "Miss Peasgood"), being a debutante is a lifelong commitment to following the rules and obeying the "do nots" that define a woman of refinement: "A debutante doesn't have to do anything" she tries to explain to her pupils. "A debutante is something,"

The members of her current class do not necessarily fulfill Ms. Peasgood's idealized portrait of a debutante, but the bills must be paid so she does her best. Of the three, it is Barbara (Keilly McQuail)—daughter of the recently deceased Missy Sutton, who was the epitome of the classic debutante—in whom she invests her hopes of passing on the torch. The other two are the rebellious Brenda (Elizabeth Alderfer) and the woefully-out-of-her-league Frankie (Anna Abhau Elliott), who much prefers to spend her time with her horse.

The play alternates scenes between the girls' lives at home with those in Ms. Peasgood's studio, where her handyman Thomas (Ronald Alexander Peet) shows far more grace than any of her charges ("I could cry," says Ms. Peasgood after watching Thomas demonstrate how to curtsey).

Brenda sees herself as a rebel, taking her boyfriend Bill (Ben Otto) for granted (an arranged "merger," as she calls their relationship) and hooking up with the leather-jacketed James Dean-inspired Mirza (Eshan Bay), with whom she enacts word-for-word episodes of Dynasty and plans to run away by stealing a gun and hopping a freight. Frankie spends all her free time with her horse, and Barbara spends hers trying to hang out with the maid Sylvia (Lena Hudson), while attempting to stave off an emotional breakdown in response to her mother's suicide, a subject that is apparently off limits at home.

Still, Debutante is a comedy, and as the girls go through their crises (a good deal of it encompassing much silliness, including a lot of the aforementioned physical activity), we can see they are moving away from being defined by the expectations that have been thrust upon them and heading toward some as-yet unshaped future.

In truth, the play does try to cover a lot of ground in 90 minutes and could stand some further refinement itself. We would, I think, like to know more about Thomas and Ms. Peasgood (a budding interracial romance, perhaps?), and the boys are rather sketchy, but the three young women at the center are well drawn and together offer up a portrait of self-actualization and openness that would come to define Gen Xers.

Ms. Weir, the playwright, has said in an interview that she is interested in exploring the lives of "polite, mannered women" who want to find a way to contribute to society. It should be most interesting to watch her continue her examination of these issues over time as she hones her obvious talents.

Debutante
Through May 10
Bernie Wohl Center at the Goddard Riverside Center, 647 Columbus Avenue at 92nd Street
Tickets online and current Performance Schedule: brownpapertickets.com