[NEohioPAL] Review of "The 10-10 New Plays Festival" at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's one-act smorgasbord lacks variety, vivacity

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 7/5/13



 

It has often been said that watching an evening of one-act plays is like dining exclusively on hors d'oeuvres.  These bite-sized bits of theater can easily satisfy an appetite for the arts if they are sufficiently rich and in abundance.  If one is not to your liking, you can simply spit into a napkin -- figuratively speaking - and move on to the next offering.  

 

Currently on stage at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's intimate River Street Playhouse is a potential panoply of theatrical canapés.  Co-directed by Yvonne Pilarczyk and Catherine Remick, "The 10-10 Festival" is the CVLT's third biennial foray into original, ten-minute one-act plays.  

 

This time around, expect to expectorate.

 

There's a limit to what a writer can do in ten minutes of stage time.  Nonetheless, characters in one-acts still need to be vivid and interesting, their situations need to be compelling and pertinent, and plots must progress with some semblance of eloquence.  Actors in these abbreviated endeavors have to hit the ground running and win over an audience from the opening moment.  

 

In short, short does not mean simplistic.  An evening of one-act plays can and must be various and ambitious in order to succeed.  Sadly, this year's "The 10-10 Festival" is neither.

 

The evening gets off to a sluggish start with "Life Lines" by Donna Hoke.  This play about a woman dealing with the death of her adult son goes nowhere and does so as if dipped in molasses.  With its solemn tone and maudlin "Next to Normal" contrivance of the dead co-existing with the living, it has no highs or lows.  Priscilla Kaczuk's concerted effort to create some seems forced and only adds to the piece's ineffectiveness.

 

Many of the plays that follow are similarly sober affairs that also try and fail to sustain drama by stretching a single emotion or a singularly emotional moment beyond capacity.  Still, some fine acting takes place in the course of these unremarkable works.  

 

Claudia Lillibridge is wonderful as a daughter making good on a promise to her deceased Dad in Maureen Brady Johnson's tender but tepid "Planting the Music."  Barbara Lindsey's "Canyon's Edge," which also does that dead-among-the-living thing, nicely showcases the talents of Art Kuskin, as an older man who has lost his wife, and Natalie Seifried, as a younger woman who is leaving her fiancée.  Mark DePompei and Priscilla Kaczuk, as a divorcing couple, do good work in David MacGregor's "For Old Time's Sake."   

 

Other selections - including Rich Orloff's "The Latest News From The Primordial Ooze," about two water-dwelling creatures at different stages of evolution; Stanley Toledo's "That Loving Feeling," which is an exposition-laden tale about an intergalactic lost and found desk; Sarah Osinsky's "The Lunacy of Metric Matching," about internet-aided dating; and Cynthia Wilcox and Sarah Kellogg's "Seismic Shift," which takes place moments after an earthquake -- read like flat comedy sketches.  

 

Several cast members, including Doug Lillibridge and Jerry Schaber, perform with way too little creative abandon in these pieces, which may well be symptomatic of some lackluster stage direction.  Shannon Sidorick and Don Edelman offer more interesting choices.

 

Also in the evening's mix is John Evans Remick II's "Azazel," which is a wordy, tedious affair that benefits from Art Kuskin's brilliant slow burn reactions but cannot be salvaged by Bob Fortlage, as a long-winded dinner guest.

 

Too little too late, the most entertaining play comes toward the end of the evening.

 

Greg Mandryk's "Special Extra Treatment" is an effervescent play within a play within a play about a stressed maître d' who must get a couple of minor characters to vacate the best table in the restaurant, which has been reserved for the featured players.  In ten minutes, a fun, absurd and unpredictable world is created, witty and fast-moving repartee explodes off the stage, and Roger Atwell, Kathy Lamping, and Mark DePompei create immediately interesting and endearing characters.

 

If this play appeared earlier, similarly well-constructed works appeared more often, and creative risks were in greater supply, the dining would be finer at the smorgasbord that is this year's "The 10-10 Festival."

 

"The 10-10 Festival" continues through July 13 at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's River Street Playhouse, 56 River Street, Chagrin Falls.  For tickets, which are $10, call 440-247-8955 or visit www.cvlt.org.
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