Friday Night Quickies!
For some unfathomable reason, the 10-Minute Play has taken root in smaller theatre companies around the nation. Probably because they short, cheap to produce, and allow actors further ways of showcasing themselves, but not ways, generally, of improving their acting chops.
One such evening is at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, CA.
According to the notes in the program, the acting company resting there asked playwrights for short pieces set in a modern bedroom set. Naturally, sexual issues predominate -- some larger-than-life, some ordinary. Seven plays (at two hours, including intermission – making them longer than ten minutes each, on average) attempted to make logical sense of life. None were totally successful, in part because the short-play is often hampered by the time-crunch in getting useable ideas out there, to be acted-upon. BEDTIME STORY (written by Marty Parker and directed by Tom Shell) features a very young daughter asking her military father to tell her a romantic fairy story and he comes up with one about a Vietnamese whore who died: very peculiar. Then NON-SMOKING ROOM (written and directed by Kerry Bailey) concerns the breakup of a non-completed one-night stand between two married people, destined to have a couples foursome-dinner the very next night: aside from a couple of jokes that struck home, the play went nowhere; LOVERS AND GIRLFRIENDS AND BEDS, OH MY! (written and directed by David Wally) opens with a lesbian love-making situation. We then see one of the participants breaking up with her female lover over the fact that the young woman in the sex-scene is her brand-new sister-in-law: potentially good (it’s part of a longer play in formation), but entirely too truncated for belief; I WILL IF YOU WILL (Ashley Taylor, playwright, Adam Conger direction) shows us a couple in trouble: they both want what they aren’t getting in their marriage, fueled by problems with alcohol. The issues in their private lives are complex and the situation is actually funny: possible life ahead of it; QUICKIE (written by Robin Ribakoff, directed by Moosie Drier) is a drama about another couple in trouble – some amusing lines, but a climatic set-up that comes out of nowhere; BROKEN TOYS (Dan Spector, author; Moosie Drier, director), perhaps the most amusing of the set, introduces us to a long-time, seemingly happy, marriage in which the husband thinks that a gaily-wrapped present of an electronic sex-toy will enhance their love-life – so, so wrong. The script mostly skews the dominant male ego, always worthwhile an attack; a longer play is indicated here; the final play, CUFFS (Ashley Taylor, writer; Christian Lohf, director) was a decidedly un-funny skit about a man in his shorts, handcuffed to his hotel bed, and the cleaning lady who could not care less and tells him so in no uncertain words.
The biggest problem for the actors was how so many of them could not be clearly heard – a real problem in a tiny theatre, folks. One of the responsible issues, of course, lies in the one-performance-a-week (Fridays), which interferes with building and sustaining the tensions within the scripts. But, generally, they were a competent lot with Christopher Rich, Steve Apostolina, Lia Sargent, Kate Warner, and Leah Falls standing out.
I’m afraid one’s appreciation of this genre will dictate how much fun you get from it.
QUICKIES! plays August 14th, 21st and 28th at 8:00pm at the Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks, CA. Price: $25. Tickets at theatremania.com or 866.811.4111