Plays are half success, half failure at this season’s One Act
Festival
Theatre 40 adds memorable and forgettable at annual festival
By Lawrence Sullivan
Once again, Theatre 40’s Annual One-Act Festival is in season,
now going on its sixth year. In comparison to the company’s
sensational previous two festivals, this year’s was anticlimactic.
Notwithstanding, at least two of the four acts are entitled to
ovation.
Joe Pintauro’s "Seymour In The Very Heart of Winter" made the
evening. James Barte, as the waiter, humors the audience to
unanimous laughter within the first two minutes of the play. Merely
in setting the table, but with such exquisite touch, such panache,
he sets the play off for success.
It’s Christmas Eve dinner at a fine French restaurant for
Vivienne and Joe. With a thick homey Italian accent, Demetrio
James’ vulgarity is all the more endearing in the role of Joe, a
young brawny chauffeur. Rhonda Lord plays a haughty over-nice
actress, Vivienne, well passed her prime yet adhering still to
delusions of grandeur. Her enduring idealization of shattered
ideals is at the very heart of the impossibility of this
relationship, or of any for that matter.
Also by Pintauro, "Rosen’s Son," directed by festival producer
Andre Barron, made its mark as well. An elderly Jewish man, Mr.
Rosen, confronts his deceased son’s lover, Eddie, of whose pain he
requires testimony to reconcile his mourning. So traumatized is the
old man, and so well played by Thom Keane-Koutsoukos, that his
generation’s inherent pangs regarding homosexuality never once make
issue, nor even insinuation. Under these circumstances, love is
addressed in a highly charged but genderless fashion, as if
displaced in time.
"Doing Something for Sally," by Chris Ralph was not as
memorable. Marie (Gita Donovan) conducts do-it-yourself brain
surgery on her daughter Sally down in the basement, while her
husband Ted (Chip Heller) offers a hand, but mostly gets in the
way. Whether by the decision of the playwright or by that of
director Stephan Tobolawsky, Sally is a plastic doll, somewhere
between a crash test dummy and a child CPR mannequin.
Exactly what Ralph envisions for the future of family life is
left wide-open for interpretation by Tobolowsky. Several lines of
interchange between Marie and Ted on their marital (questionably)
relationship are rich in content and deliverance, but overall, the
piece doesn’t adhere too well. If that’s the point, it would be
more at place at the Wooden-O alongside Lisa Morton’s SCI-FIs.
In "John’s Hand," Catherine Butterfield contrasts the
achievements of science to reach out into space while people can’t
even reach out to one another. The acting is not bad, the subject
of some consequence, but the play lacks distillation. One has the
sense of watching an unextraordinary scene out of an ordinary
household.
THEATER: The 6th Annual One Act Festival, featuring plays by Joe
Pinauo, Catherine Butterfield and Chris Ralph. Produced by Andre
Barron. Playing at Theatre 40 through Feb. 5. Wednesday-Saturday at
8 p.m., Sun at 2 p.m. Tickets: $10. For more info call
(213)466-1767.