Nancy Watkins, left, as the mother of talented singer Little Voice, and her closest friend, portrayed by Rhonda Warnack, perform an impromptu dance to celebrate a show business success.

A shy woman with the ability to mimic singers like Judy Garland and Édith Piaf is the central character in the latest play at the Ten Fifteen Theater in Astoria.

“The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” opens Friday and runs three weekends. Tickets are $25, on sale online.

The dark comedy is directed by Edward James. It features Terri Baier as Little Voice and Nancy Watkins as her mother, Mari.

Natan Ezra plays a seedy talent agent who introduces the girl to a nightclub owner called Mr. Boo, played by Leland Fallon. Sean Cooney and Jim Dott appear as phone installation technicians and Rhonda Warnack portrays Mari’s friend.

The story features a reclusive young woman who is alienated from her promiscuous single mother. She spends her time listening to her late father’s record collection of female singers.

“She has a gift for imitating them and is overheard by a small-time talent representative her man-hungry mother is dating,” James said. “He senses a meal ticket and eventually lures the shy woman to sing at Mr. Boo’s club.”

Jim Cartwright wrote the play for British actress Jane Horrocks, who would warm up before performing in another of his plays by singing impressions of Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Ethel Merman.

The play was first performed in 1992 and had a Broadway run a year later. It was made into a film in 1998 with Horrocks starring alongside Michael Caine and Brenda Blethyn.

Although she earned positive reviews for the role, Horrocks’ career gained a higher profile as the ditzy assistant Bubble in the long-running television comedy “Absolutely Fabulous.”

ConnectionJames, the director, has written from an early age. “The theme I explored most frequently, and not entirely successfully, was finding one’s true voice,” he said. “This is the universal quest of all artists — actors, painters, writers. Perhaps it is every man’s quest. ‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’ is, in a sense, that story that eluded me.”

He said he enjoys Cartwright’s ear for industrialized England. “His dialogue is sometimes poetic, sometimes darkly humorous,” he said. “The play offers a very particular slice of life in an English factory town. The characters yearn for a better life and are filled with the expectations of achieving it. How they go about it is the substance of the story.”

Baier was previously directed by James in the one-woman show, “Every Brilliant Thing,” as well as the title role in “Alice In Wonderland” at the Charlene Larsen Center last fall.

The play resonates because her father died recently and, like the character she portrays, their deepest connection was through music. “I was really close to my father and our thing was music,” Baier said. “We would listen to music together.”

Learning to sound like Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Bassey has stretched her. “I have sung for many years, and with singing and karaoke I am comfortable singing with a microphone,” she said. “My greatest challenge has been trying to sound like the singers and their voices. But I like that genre, so it has been fun.”

‘Buzzing’James said his challenge has been staging the scenes on the 16-foot-wide and deep stage at the Ten Fifteen Theater. A composite set becomes the family’s cramped home and an alley and is later transformed into a nightclub.

He hopes to draw specific responses from those who attend.

“Early in my directing career, an audience member thanked me for a show I directed,” he recalled. “Her words have stuck with me. Every time I put on the director’s hat, I think of them.

“She said, ‘I don’t come to the theater to be lectured. I come to be taken out of myself.’ A director’s greatest pleasure is to watch audiences leaving a performance either smiling or buzzing about what they just saw.”

‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’

‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’

A play staged by Ten Fifteen Productions, written by Jim Cartwright and directed by Edward James

7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Ten Fifteen Theater, 1015 Commercial St., Astoria. Additional shows at 7:30 p.m. April 5, April 6 and April 11 to 13, matinee shows at 3:30 p.m. Sunday and on April 7.

Tickets are $25

www.thetenfifteentheater.com