Four actors will tonight play 27 characters who all covet, steal, bestow or misplace a string of pearls.

They will be performing in the latest Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society production 'String of Pearls'', which opens tonight at the Daylesford Theatre.

The play was written by Michelle Lowe, who in addition to being nominated for an Outer Critic Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play for 'String of Pearls', is also the 2010 finalist for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for her plays 'INANA' and 'Victoria Musica'. This marked the first time in the award's 33-year history that a playwright was nominated for two plays in one season.

'String of Pearls' is directed for BMDS by Sheilagh Robertson who is making her debut as the director of her first full length production.

She said: "It is a real challenge and it is more complicated than some I've done in the past, simply because we have four actresses playing 27 different roles, which is a challenge for everyone.

"It is a challenge for the actresses themselves, because they have to transform themselves into different people, it is a challenge for me to keep track of who is who, so I think it is fun for everybody because it is a challenge."

The play could be described as a series of vignettes, explained Mrs. Robertson. "Each character comes on and tells their story and sometimes they are by themselves in a monologue and talk about things that have happened in the past and so each of the monologues sets the scene for the story," she said.

"I see the pearls as representing love in many forms, they represent sexual love, motherly love, sisterly love, friendship type love, and it speaks to all forms that love takes," said the director.

The four actresses are Deborah Pharoah, Tania Weller, Deborah Smith-Joell and Lillian Veri.

"Deborah Pharoah plays Beth who is the character who we see at the beginning and she is 74 and when we next see her, we see her at age 39," said Mrs Robertson.

"She is the one who starts the story off and she is the one who receives the pearls for the first time. When we see her again, she is 79.

The set is very simple, clean and abstract, because it goes back and forth in time and different places. It was designed by Margaret Potts and it gives the sense of life's flow.

Another interesting facet of the play for the director is the way women's lives have changed over the latter half of the 20th Century.

"From your typical stay at home housewives, to women moving into the working world and the conflict between career and family, the advantages and disadvantages, and the choices women have to make," she said.

"When I came to Bermuda, I came in the early 70s and it was a time when people would call you Mrs. John Smith, but I said, 'I'm not Mrs. John Smith, I am who I am'.

"I kept my maiden name and it was something that was just starting to happen and some people were accepting and others thought it was just this dreadful thing – something very radical.

"But it was just this idea that as a woman you had this identity apart from the person you are married to and at the time it was still a little unusual. It seems for antiquated now, but it is a reflection of women in society today where women play a much larger role."

The play opens tonight at 8 p.m. and runs until May 1.

Tickets $25, are available at the Daylesford Theatre Box Office from 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays only and between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. on performance nights.

Call 292-0848 for more information. Otherwise tickets can be purchased at www.bmds.bm.