BWW Reviews: 10-Minute Plays Bring Comedic Close to Humana Festival

Ten-minute plays are one of the greatest challenges in the theatrical world. How do you create a fully realized world with a few minute details while crafting characters and a story that are compelling and entertaining? The Humana Festival of New American Plays has become a destination for a trio of the best each year, and this year features an array of shorts that accomplishes the overarching mission of the format - and provides a rollicking good time in the process.

The evening begins with "Rules of Comedy" by Patricia Cotter, in which an intensely high-strung young woman seeks out stand-up comedy lessons from a young man not entirely up to the task. But there are deeper issues at the root of both characters, and resolving their mutual crises will depend on, in the grand tradition of good joke-telling, a twist.

Cotter's script is lush with the knowledge of standup comedy and plays upon the ins and outs of one of the most stressful performing arts to reveal the lives of two incredibly lost people. If everything stated so far makes this sound like a drama? As far from it as possible. This play is a scream, with ATL veteran Emily Stout combining the neuroses of her character with precision timing and Conrad Schott making Guy the Failed Standup affable without being pitiful. Director John Rooney keeps the pace upbeat while allowing time within the format's constraints for important character moments. Scenic designer Dane Laffrey's bare-bones studio apartment tells us 90 percent of what we need to know about Guy the moment the lights rise, with the additional utility of serving as the base for the evening's entire roster of plays. "Rules" is a great launching pad for the evening's work - and, as it turns out, the most realistic form of comedy in the set.

Gary Winter's "So Unnatural a Level" drops us into an absurd incident in the dry-as-a-bone world of insurance in order to reveal a persuasive idea about the virtues of hiding in the background. An office full of processors is beset by a natural disaster - which, as it turns out, isn't going to do much to break them from their humdrum routine. But the arrival of a mutated sea creature (props to the creators of this hilarious horror) clears the room of all but the two most innocuous characters - an all-purpose intern and an employee in the wrong office who has managed quite an artistic feat in her time with the company.

Winter's script is a slow burn to a few big reveals, with the majority of the players going about their tasks with deadpan efficiency or put-upon anger. Director Les Waters plays things straight to accentuate the highlights: the grotesque monstrosity (which hilariously but unobtrusively wriggles throughout the scene), and the hidden gems in the corporate machine. Lexi Lapp and Kayla Jackmon, two members of this season's Apprentice company, acquit themselves well in revealing the agony and ecstasy of anonymity.

The final play of the evening escalates the action from realism and lyrical absurdity to gleefully bloody, brutal satire. Steve Yockey's "Joshua Consumed An Unfortunate Pear" comes closest in this grouping to sketch comedy while playing with ancient theatrical ideas to explore - and eviscerate with a blunt object - long-term relationships.

As a Greek chorus straight from triage explains at the outset, Joshua is a brave man who has battled a contingent of horrid beasts to attain some magical pears that will grant him and his lady love immortality. Only trouble is, he forgot to check with her first. Joshua (Andrew Garman) and Amelia (Megan Byrne) hash out their issues with the chorus (Seth Clayton, Kevin Free, Mallory Moser, and David Ryan Smith) imparting uncomfortable truths along the way.

The focus is on the action here, and director Meredith McDonough's cast plays with strokes as broad as the jet streams of blood which soak actors and set alike. The laughs are nonstop, to such an extent that the character of Death's zingers are almost run over. All involved are clearing have a blast.

Putting bold comedy at the forefront with currents of emotional depth bubbling to the surface along the way, the 39th Humana Fest's 10-minute plays provide a highly entertaining close to another varied, successful season. Here's to these plays finding their next stagings very soon.

39th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays
10-Minute Plays

"Rules of Comedy" by Patricia Cotter
Directed by John Rooney

"So Unnatural a Level" by Gary Winter
Directed by Les Waters

"Joshua Consumed an Unfortunate Pear" by Steve Yockey
Directed by Meredith McDonough

For more information, go to www.actorstheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.