Summer Shorts: Series B

B

The second installment of this year’s one-act play festival at 59E59 Theater B begins with a work by Share White (The True, The Other Place), and concludes with one by Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things, Reasons To Be Pretty). In between, we get a comedic piece by Nancy Bleemer (Centennial Casting) which will become part of a trilogy. In White’s piece “Lucky,” set in the late 1940’s, we meet Meredith (Christine Spang; The Drunken City), a war bride whose husband Phil (Blake DeLong; Illyria) has mysteriously not returned home after WWII. She knows only that, although uninjured, he had been in a hospital. When she learns that he has just returned to town, she rushes to his hotel room to confront him. For a long — too long — time, all she gets from the sullen Phil is one-word responses that do not explain why he had not returned or whether he planned to stay. The answer is not worth the wait. One annoying quirk is that Phil performs the entire play with shaving cream on his sideburns. The festival’s artistic director J.J. Kandel (Sparring Partner) directed. In “Providence,” Bleemer introduces us to Michael (Jake Robinson; Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) and Renee (Blair Lewin), a mostly happily married couple who are spending a sleepless night in the narrow bed of Michael’s childhood bedroom on the night before his sister's wedding. Their 3 a.m. conversation attracts the attention of Pauly (Nathan Wallace), the nervous groom-to-be, who seeks their advice on what married couples can talk about. Apparently his parents were not big on conversation. Pauly’s intrusion exposes a few fault lines in their marriage, but one has no doubt that all will be fine. The characters are likable and their comical situation is fun to watch. Ivey Lowe directed. LaBute’s “Appomatox” shows the playwright in much better form than he displayed in his three one-act plays last winter. We meet buttoned-down Caucasian Joe (Jack Mikesell; The Nap) and seemingly easy-going African-American Frank (Ro Boddie; Socrates) who get together weekly to have lunch and toss the ball. Joe shares his enthusiasm about Georgetown students’ vote to pay $27.20 in extra fees to atone for the university’s sale of 270 slaves. He is puzzled by Frank’s complete lack of enthusiasm and pushes him to explain his reasons. Their conversation gradually escalates into dangerous territory that casts doubt on the possibility of interracial understanding. LaBute builds the tension skillfully and all too convincingly. Duane Boutté's (LOL) direction is assured. It was by far the most substantive offering of this year’s festival. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Summer Shorts: Series A

C

The 13th season of this Festival of New American Short Plays is now underway at 59E59 Theater B. The three plays in Series A all involve death or the threat thereof. The first and strongest play, “Interior” by Nick Payne (Constellations, A Life), is an evocative adaptation of Maeterlinck's play. An old man (Bill Buell; Ink, Rancho Viejo) and a stranger (Jordan Bellow; New Here) who have found the body of a drowned girl stand outside her home, observing her family enjoying their final moments of happiness before they must inform them of her death. Buell gives a strong leading performance as the old man whose daughters Martha (Joanna Whicker) and Marie (Mariah Lee; I’m Sorry) also put in an appearance. The mood is greatly enhanced by artful projections of paintings by Sharon Holiner. Rory McGregor’s (Sea Wall/A Life) direction is sensitive. “The Bridge Play,” by Danielle Trzcinski (Little Black Dress!), portrays the mostly comical interaction between John (James P. Rees; The Killer) a depressed middle-aged man about to jump off a bridge and Alex (Christopher Dylan White; The Workshop), the social-media-addicted teenager who interrupts him. It scores some easy points but lacks any real sense of peril. Sarah Cronk directed. In “Here I Lie,” Courtney Baron (When It’s You) presents two overlapping monologues. In one, Maris (Libe Barer), a publishing assistant, on a sudden impulse, tells her boss she has terminal cancer, and then feels obligated to follow her lie to its logical conclusion. In the other, Joseph (Robbie Tann; Home Street Home), a pediatric nurse, becomes emotionally involved with a very sick preemie and ends up craving similarly tender care for himself. The two narrators ignore and interrupt each other, which quickly became tedious. While both stories are interesting, I did not think they were well-matched and the manner of telling them simultaneously diminished rather than enhanced them. I personally would have preferred being presented with just one of them. While this playwright’s technique was perhaps the most ambitious, it did not work for me. Maria Mileaf (After the Wedding) directed. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Summer Shorts - Series B *** B

The tepid program offered by Series A of this year’s Summer Shorts festival at 59E59 Theater is partially redeemed by the three plays in Series B.

“Black Flag” by Idris Goodwin presents two freshman roommates meeting for the first time after a summer of online contact. Sydney (Francesca Carpanini) is from Georgia and Deja (Suzette Azariah Gunn) is from Detroit. Things get off to a bad start when Sydney hangs a Confederate flag over her bed, heedless of how it might affect her black roommate. Sydney regards it as a symbol of Southern pride given to her by her mother to remind her of her roots. Deja is reluctant to make a fuss and tries not to be provoked. Her Japanese-American boyfriend Harry (Ruy Iskandar) is less forbearing. The play ends on an ambiguous but satisfying note. The situation is a bit contrived and the scene with the boyfriend seemed false, but I credit the playwright for taking on a timely topic and giving it a nuanced presentation. The actors were convincing and the direction by Logan Vaughn was unfussy. 

“Queen” by Alexander Dinelaris (“On Your Feet” and “Birdman”) was inspired by the Gabriel Garcia Marquez story “The Woman Who Came at Six O’Clock.” Queen (Casandera M. I. Lollar) is a world-weary hooker who shows up every day at six at the restaurant owned by Joe (Saverio Tuzzolo), a bachelor who has loved her unrequitedly for years and treats to to drinks and supper every night. On this day, Queen is quite agitated when she arrives and asks Joe, who is famous for his honesty, to lie for her. When a detective Chris McFarland) arrives and asks about Queen, Joe is put to the test. I thought Ms. Lollar looked too young and pretty to be convincing as Queen. Director Victor Slezak let the play overheat at times.

The evening’s most theatrical and most ambitious work is “The Dark Clothes of Night” by Richard Alfredo, an affectionate send-up of film noir and those who love it too much. Much is demanded of its three fine actors, who excel in the 13 roles they play. Dana Watkins is both Rob, a film professor in a failing marriage, and Burke, a sleuth with an attraction to femmes fatales. Sinem Meltem Dogan is wonderful as his wife Sylvie; an annoying student Emily; a nurse; Delilah Twain, the rich beautiful widow who hires Burke, and Delia, her younger sister. James Rees is a delight as Rob’s academic colleague Barry, a detective, the sisters’ dotty father, a wacky couples therapist and an evil doctor. The dialogue is archly hilarious. The production is greatly enhanced by projections by Daniel Mueller that evoke the noir milieu. The play falters a bit in its final moments, but not enough to dampen one’s enjoyment of an extremely clever work. The multitalented Alesander Dinelaris directed.

For the other productions credits, please see my review of Series A.

Summer Shorts - Series A ** C

The Festival of New American Short Plays is celebrating its 10th year with two series of three plays each at 59E59 Theater. The three plays in Series A, performed without intermission, last barely 80 minutes. 

“The Helpers” by Cusi Cram, presents two characters, a retired psychiatrist (Maggie Burke) and a former patient (David Deblinger), who meet on a bench in Greenwich Village on a cold winter day to settle some unfinished business. It’s a brief character sketch that doesn’t go very deep. The acting is adequate as is the direction by Jessi D. Hill.

Neil LaBute is back again this year with “After the Wedding,” in which a husband and wife (Frank Harts and Elizabeth Masucci) who have been married 5 or 6 years, face the audience in separate pools of light and engage in two overlapping monologues that start by relating amusing bits about their marriage but end up telling about a tragic event that occurred at the start of their honeymoon which they have tried hard to avoid thinking about. Since this is LaBute, there is some sexual content. The actors are convincing and Maira Mileaf’s direction is smooth. 

“This Is How It Ends” by A. Rey Pamatmat, by far the longest of the three plays, is an unwieldy absurdist look at the end of the world as seen by a gay man Jake (Chinaza Uche), Annie (Kerry Warren), the roommate he found on Craigslist  who reveals that she is really the Antichrist and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Death (Nadine Malouf), Famine (Rosa Gilmore), Pestilence (Sathya Sridharan) and War (Patrick Cummings). It turns out that the latter two are a downlow item. The plot is too disjointed to make much sense although director Ed Sylvanus Iskander (“The Mysteries” at The Flea) bravely tries.

The simple set by Rebecca Lord-Surratt features a back wall of louvred panels that swivel to reveal a smooth surface for projections on the reverse side. The costumes by Amy Sutton for the Four Horsemen are quite amusing. 

All in all, it was not a very satisying program. Before the first play, there was an interesting stop-motion short film of the crew assembling the set. The start was delayed for ten minutes by an argument over a seat between a man in a wheelchair and a woman with a walker that forced the house manager to intervene and got a round of applause from the audience when calm was restored. Would that the plays had been equally involving.

Summer Shorts: Series B *

The second installment of the Summer Shorts Festival of New American Short Plays at 59E59 Theater features works by Lucy Thurber (The Hill Town Plays), Robert O’Hara (Bootycandy) and Stella Fawn Ragsdale.

In Thurber’s Unstuck we meet Pete (Alfredo Narciso), a man too depressed to leave the house even on his birthday. In three scenes he interacts with his sister Jackie (Lauren Blumenfeld) who badgers him to critique her hilariously inept tap-dance routine, his narcissistic friend Sara (Carmen Zilles), who offers him a birthday cupcake and a song and, finally, his patient live-in girlfriend Deirdre (KK Moggie), who tries to snap him out of his depression. Unfortunately Pete’s lethargy was contagious and, for me, more than cancelled out the liveliness of the three women. Laura Savia directed.

O’Hara’s Built has an interesting premise. Mrs. Back (Merritt Janson), a disgraced former teacher has a rendezvous with Mason (Justin Bernegger), a studly 25-year-old with whom she had sex at school 10 years ago. Their encounter is more than a little kinky. The brief male nudity suggests why she found him so irresistible. Their perspectives on their earlier relationship differ. Unfortunately, the play ends with a twist that comes out of nowhere and makes very little sense. Bernegger certainly gives it his all. Who was it who said that there’s nothing wrong with being an exhibitionist as long as you put on a good show? The playwright directed.

Ragsdale’s Love Letters to a Dictator gets off to a bad start and never recovers. Stella (Colby Minifie, recently in Punk Rock), a farm woman with the same name as the playwright enters with a large laundry basket under her arm. Instead of setting the basket down and sitting, she balances on one foot struggling to take her boots off while still holding the basket. Nothing that follows makes much sense either. Stella has left her family behind in Tennessee to move to New York to be a writer. It is also mentioned that she left to avoid ostracism over the wrong kind of love. Unable to adjust to city life, she moves to a farm in the Hudson Valley. Out of the blue she begins corresponding with the North Korean dictator and seeks his advice over whether to return home. She hangs her correspondence from clothespins on a line that stretches across the stage. When Kim Jong-Il dies, she writes a final letter. That’s about it. Logan Vaughn directed.

While the actors in all three plays were commendable, the material did not rise very far above the level of exercises for a playwriting workshop. The sets and costumes were by the same people who designed Series A. Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission. It seemed longer.

Summer Shorts: Series A ***

59E59 Theater is once again hosting the Summer Shorts Festival of New American Short Plays. Series A features works by Neil LaBute (most recently The Way We Get By), Vickie Ramirez and Matthew Lopez (The Whipping Man). 

LaBute’s 10K  presents two joggers, a woman (Clea Alsip) and a man (J.J. Kandel), who are certainly among the fittest actors on a New York stage. Although they are jogging for almost the entire play, their bodies and their voices show no signs of fatigue. They meet on their daily run in a nature reserve and carry on a conversation that gradually grows more personal and leads them to reveal their fantasies. It’s a minor work that is superbly realized. The playwright directed.

Glenburn 12 WP by Ramirez is the evening’s weak point. Troy (Tre Davis), a young black man who has been at an anti-racism protest at Grand Central Terminal, enters a nearby Irish pub to have a beer. The bartender is unaccountably absent. He is soon joined by Roberta (Tanis Parenteau), a woman in her 30s who is a regular at the bar and who turns out to be part Native American. She tries to persuade him to have a drink, but he is reluctant to without the bartender there. She provokes him into a conversation and offers to pay for his drinks. When she goes down to the cellar allegedly to see if the bartender is there, she returns with a bottle of the very expensive Scotch for which the play is named. After a couple of drinks, she reveals a dark secret, which seemed completely implausible. The actors did their best with poorly written characters. Mel Haney directed.

The Sentinels by Lopez introduces us to three 9/11 widows whose husbands worked for the same firm and who meet at a coffee shop near ground zero every year. Alice’s (Meg Gibson) husband was the company’s founder. The acerbic Christa (Kellie Overbey) was married to an important executive there. Kelly’s (Michelle Beck) husband was a recent hire. Zuzanna Szadkowski is the waitress. The gimmick is that the story is told backwards starting in 2011 and proceeding in short scenes back to 2000. The concept is better than the execution. The short scenes don’t really build in intensity. The cast was good. The flatness seemed more in the writing than in Stephen Brackett’s direction.

Rebecca Lord-Surratt’s set design transformed nicely between locations. Dede Ayite’s costumes were apt. The evening was pleasant but not memorable. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes, no intermission.