Jeff Binder and Demond Green in a scene from
Romance by Neil LaBute
(Photo credit: Ari Mintz)
Just as happened last year, Neil LaBute has walked off with the playwrighting honors in this year’s Summer Shorts 4: Annual Festival of New American Short Plays, Series A. His latest shocker, ironically titled Romance, is a confrontation between two male lovers, the one who left and the one who can’t get over the break-up. This one-act play tells us everything we need to know about the six and a half year relationship between the two men, even leading up to a resolution of sorts.
However, most interesting of all, LaBute, believing that the play “is meant to showcase what an individual actor can bring to any character,” has allowed the play to be presented twice with the same two actors switching roles. A tour de force in the capable hands of Jeff Binder and Demond Green, the two versions of Romance offer a fascinating opportunity for the audience to see how a different interpretation changes the emotional territory explored by the same play.
Not only does the story shift, but the characters take on totally different personas: in one, the unfaithful lover appears a selfish hedonist; in the other, he seems to have fled to save himself from a co-dependent relationship. Dolores Rice’s astute direction makes us see the couple’s break-up in a whole new light. Having named the characters “A” and “B,” LaBute has also demonstrated that it is possible to write a gender-free play, that is one that could be played by a man and a woman, two men, or two women.
The other three plays are also basically two-character confrontations. In the curtain-raiser, Deb Margolin’s The Expenses of Rain, Harry played by Iyaba Ibo Mandingo standing in front of a Chinese grocery attempts to tell the story of why he quit his job turning off delinquents’ electricity while the owner of the store (Jo Yang) tries to silence him. Although Laura Barnett’s production is worthy, the text is nothing more than an anecdote and leaves us hungry for more. Margolin does capture a consistent absurdist tone in Harry’s monologue.
Timothy Mason’s An Actor Prepares is also best seen as a character study, but this drama set in London in the 1980’s would be more effective as a scene from a much longer drama. While 18-year-old Aran attempts to revive his father Tom, a once-famous British actor, now a terrible alcoholic, after yet another binge, the two men refer to many off-stage characters who are difficult to keep straight as they are often called by nicknames: Tom’s current wife and latest child, his agent, his best friend.
Although nothing much happens, it becomes obvious that Tom is headed for still lower depths while Aran, already a fixture in the profession, has his star in the ascendance. Attempting to rehearse his small role in a regional production of Coriolanus while overcome by liquor, Mark Elliot Wilson compellingly suggests such hard-drinking British stars as Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris. However, the slow pace of Maxwell Williams’ direction makes it seem like the actors are worried about maintaining their studied English accents, rather than the problem at hand. James Leighton does what he can with the underwritten role of the son.
Allison Daugherty, Alex Manette and Josh Helman
in a scene from Roger Hedden’s Play with the Penguin
Returning playwright Roger Hedden offers Play with the Penguin, a breezy investigation of a marriage in need of a dose of novelty. When Joy (Allison Daugherty) and Hap (Alex Manette) admit at the breakfast table that they are getting bored with each other and might need a pet to liven things up, Hap returns home with a cellist (Josh Helman) in a tuxedo that he insists on calling a penguin. Billy Hopkins’ lively direction maintains the effervescent mood. There is nothing much wrong with Play with the Penguin except that Harold Pinter covered this same territory much more interestingly in his 1962 play The Lover. In the small role of the cellist, Helman demonstrates a facility for this kind of absurdist comedy and deserves a play of his own.
Robert Gould’s scheme for the settings of all four plays keeps the change-over time to a minimum but fails to offer much in the way of mood or atmosphere. As the plays are all contemporary, Michael Bevins’ costuming is suitably unobtrusive. Greg Macpherson and Tim Pioppo are responsible for the satisfactory lighting and sound design, respectively.
One-act play festivals are like having dinner at a smorgasbord: you get to taste many varieties and find your own favorites. While Summer Shorts 4: Series A offers four plays to choose from, it also has the added benefit of presenting the new and memorable Neil LaBute shocker in two totally different versions.
Summer Shorts 4: Series A (performed in rotating repertory through September 2)
59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-279-4200 or http://www.59E59.org