SOUTHERN ... AND JEWISH; PUT YOUR MIND ON GEORGIA WITH UHRY'S `BALLYHOO'.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Playwright Alfred Uhry creates characters so vitally and endearingly offbeat that you suspect he must have inherited some secret recipe from one of his Southern relatives.

A decade ago, Uhry won an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize with his very first play, ``Driving Miss Daisy.'' This genteel comedy of segregated manners, in which a persnickety Jewish matron learns some chastening life lessons from her steadfast African-American chauffeur, emerged through the prism of a grudgingly changing South.

Uhry's latest, ``The Last Night of Ballyhoo,'' also takes place against a sketchy background of social foment  in 1939, when certain Dixie conventions were coming under siege, though not yet entirely gone with the wind. And, once again, Uhry has drawn enough colorful characters to stock two plays.

That ability goes a long way toward patching over ``Ballyhoo's'' overly tidy plotting, including a hopelessly fabricated ending, as well as some shaky Southern accents, in the Canon Theatre's production.

Even so, the production is notable for introducing Kentucky-born film and TV actress Rebecca Gayheart. Making her stage debut as a well-bred but free-spirited Wellesley girl, Gayheart has the aristocratic elegance and cool humor of a young Blythe Danner (a k a Gwyneth Paltrow's mom). Keep an eye on this one.

Gayheart's Sunny Freitag belongs to one of two overlapping Atlanta clans, the Freitags and the Levys, middle-class German Jews who've assimilated into Bible Belt culture so thoroughly that they even keep a Christmas tree. As one family member puts it, in a typically well-wrought Uhry line, ``Christmas is just another American holiday if you take all that stuff about Jesus out.''

Nominally heading this unorthodox (pun intended) household is Adolph Freitag (Peter Michael Goetz), a bedding-company owner who uses dry humor to keep family tensions at bay. But the real power behind the throne is Adolph's widowed sister, Boo (Rhea Perlman), an indefatigable social climber who's been trying in vain to boost the material fortunes of her stubbornly eccentric daughter Lala (Perrey Reeves).

Also on hand, mostly as an emotional foil, is Boo and Adolph's cheerful sister-in-law Reba (also a widow), one of those Southern ladies who's not nearly as dim as they seem. Harriet Harris gives her a delectable performance that deftly blurs the thin line between ditsy and bluntly perceptive.

After dropping out of a Northern university during sorority rush week, Lala has come home to Georgia to dream about writing a Reconstruction-era novel, ``Though Your Sins Be Scarlet.'' Fittingly, the action here takes place in the weeks surrounding the Christmas season, the national premiere of ``Gone With the Wind'' in Atlanta, and Ballyhoo, the upcoming holiday event that's the high point of Atlanta's Jewish social calendar.

For years, there has been rivalry - for grades, beaus, parental approval, whatever - between the ``ethnic-looking'' Lala and her fair-haired, peach-skinned first cousin Sunny. It's a no-brainer to see the romantic crisis brewing when Adolph brings home his handsome young assistant Joe Farkas (Mark Kassen), a street-smart, left-leaning Brooklyn Jew whose faith is bred deeply in the bone. Will both cousins wind up with dates for Ballyhoo? Can Lala make do with Peachy Weil (Ryan Hurst), the rich Louisiana good ol' boy that Boo wants her daughter to marry?

Unfortunately, the imbalance between Lala and Sunny is replicated by the two actresses playing them. Facing the more difficult assignment, Reeves has trouble getting hold of her Georgia accent, and her tendency to overplay Lala's already high-strung, self-dramatizing personality can make her sound more like Butterfly McQueen's Prissy than Vivien Leigh's Scarlett.

As with ``Driving Miss Daisy,'' Uhry ultimately lets his characters and his audience have it both ways, smoothing away painful cultural conflicts with good-humored warmth. That strategy doesn't always work in life, but it sends you out of the Canon feeling upbeat, if unpersuaded.

THE FACTS

What: ``The Last Night of Ballyhoo.''

Where: Canon Theatre, 205 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 4 and 8 p.m. Satrudays, 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through Jan. 3, 1999. No performances Thanksgiving Day, Dec. 24, Christmas Day or New Year's Day.

Tickets: $32.50 to $42.50. Call [phone].

Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Photo

Photo: Harriet Harris, left, and Rebecca Gayheart give standout performances in ``The Last Night of Ballyhoo,'' by ``Driving Miss Daisy'' playwright Alfred Uhry.