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IN the who's who of one-woman plays, Julie Harris is Emily Dickinson, Eileen Atkins is Virginia Woolf, Zoe Caldwell is Lillian Hellman, Mary Louise Wilson is Diana Vreeland.
But Valerie Harper is Valerie Harper in ''The Dragon and the Pearl,'' an ill-conceived attempt to theatricalize the life of Pearl S. Buck whose prodigious humanitarianism has far outranked her literary reputation.
Beginning with ''The Good Earth,'' her breakthrough novel in 1931, the value of Ms. Buck's prolific writing in virtuallly all genres has been arguable, this in spite of a Nobel Prize in Literature (1938), a Pulitzer and other honors.
Ms. Buck, who was born in West Virginia, described her life as ''culturally bifocal,'' in China, where she lived unhappily and unknown for most of her first 40 years, and in America, where she became a celebrity in the mid-1930's and died an icon in 1973 at the age of 81.
''For two generations of Americans, Buck invented China,'' wrote Peter Conn in ''Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography'' (Cambridge University Press, 1996). Mr. Conn's book is the source of Marty Martin's compilation of Buck memorabilia at Theater Works in Hartford.
It was commissioned by Tony Cacciotti for Ms. Harper, to whom he is married. Even though Mr. Conn wrote that Ms. Buck, ''an emblem of unmerited success . . . was a troubled, conflicted often limited woman, capable of cruelty as well as kindness'' and that she ''wrote too much and too quickly,'' the artistic flaws and the dark side of a benevolent being remain closeted in Mr. Martin's sanctimoniously cloying script.
The star is making what amounts to a personal appearance with the aura of an investment opportunity rather than a theater event. She takes on the guises and dialects of some 12 characters, including a particularly dreadful impersonation of Eleanor Roosevelt.
The setup: Ms. Buck is addressing a gathering at her Bucks County farm for the purpose of finding homes for three Amerasian (her coinage) babies. In asides she ruminates on a tedious first marriage, a terrific second one, a disabled daughter (and seven adopted children), mismatched missionary parents as well as the joys of storytelling and the urgency of social commitment.
Like an A-list hostess should, she always attends to the value of name dropping. Her house is flanked by James Michener's and Oscar Hammerstein's. J. Edgar Hoover is out to get her. The literati love her or hate her. Henry Luce called her an ''ultra left wing Commie sympathizer.'' As a saintly altruistic charming sort of bilingual Auntie Mame, Ms. Harper seems to be in the planning stage for her annuity on the lecture circuit, without attending to layered characterization.
''The Dragon and the Pearl'' would be aptly listed under ''Speaker Series,'' as a one-night stand of multicultural enlightenment in colleges, libraries and community centers across the country in historical testament to humaneness, but not as a theater work of humanity.
''The Dragon and the Pearl,'' at the Hutensky Theater, 233 Pearl Street, Hartford. (860) 527-7838. Performances through Aug. 31.