The set-up: Cause for joy, Theatre Southwest celebrates its 17th annual Festival of Originals. Produced by Southwest's artistic director Mimi Holloway, this evening of world premiere short plays is always a must-see for theater junkies. Where else in Houston can one watch five new one-acts, each with it own distinct cast and direction?
The idea is a crap shoot for sure, for you never know exactly how these works, all unproduced and unseen before given a showing at Southwest, will play before an audience. A written script is a very different breed than a live performance, and much can change between page and stage.
Kudos to Holloway for her perseverance. She had to plow through 600 submissions. While none of these five plays will set the theater world afire, there are at least three playwrights whose work intrigues and makes me want to see more from them.
Theatre Southwest's intimate stage space has been scrubbed clean for the festival. Stripped of color, it's been turned into a black box, which means no built pieces for the sets, only rudimentary props, just bare bones. This, of course, lets the plays shine without distraction. This, of course, also lays bare their more obvious faults.
The execution: The weakest: Steven Oberman's A Slip From Reality is inconsequential sci-fi about the psychic bifurcation of Ed Koppelson. Science fiction sets its own rules for the plot to make sense, but here the exposition is so heavily clunky that we tune out before the soft twist ending. Somehow, there are two Eds (Lance Stodghill as capitalist Ned; Jonathan Moonen as surfer dude Eduardo) who have sort of merged after a car crash, or maybe they have been separate since birth but living in a parallel universe. I don't really know or care.
They had the same parents, the same girlfriend, but they split when surfer dude did a Good Samaritan act, and evil businessman did nothing. They are being held in a cell while Big Brother T.A.M.A.R.A. (the voice of Jay Menchaca) sorts out the "slippage." Surfer dude wants his girlfriend back, now married to the overworked capitalist, while the capitalist yearns for the carefree life of surfer dude.
It's fairly inexplicable and not very well thought out. Just by changing clothes at their release, they take on the other persona. Hmm, not sure this complicated double stuff works out quite so easily. Moonen has the best time, since his character is such a loopy slacker, but even Olivier couldn't inject much life into this secondhand Twilight Zone episode.
The most intriguing: Steven Alan McGraw's Rougher Stuff has menace to spare. The play is both hot and cold-blooded. Screwup nephew Joe (Jose Luis Rivera), in need of quick cash to run off to California and elude the police, attempts to rob his favorite uncle Jim (Scott Holmes), a rich, powerful, and corrupt attorney. Unbeknownst to hapless Joe, his uncle is on to him, as is Jim's hothead son Alex (Aaron Echegaray).
Stuff has the feeling of Mamet and a lot of clever Hitchcock, for there's an overwhelming chill of dread just under the brittle, well-written surface. You know that universal theater precept: if there's a gun in the first scene, it had better go off in the last scene. Well, there is Joe's gun, but there's also Alex's baseball bat.
One of Houston's best, Holmes is ideal as malevolent Uncle Jim, oily and smart, like an inverse Perry Mason; Rivera has pitiful loser Joe down pat; and Echegaray, so memorable as regal Oberon in Theatre Southwest's recent Shakespeare in Hollywood, steams and sputters with banked fury. Director David Hymel keeps the play bubbling on near-boil; the cast supplies the fire; McGraw fans the flames. We shiver and sweat.
Another Southern diner comedy: Jeffrey Strausser's Peaks and Valleys trods that well-worn country-fried territory that always resounds with audiences, whether it's set in a garage beauty parlor, a high school reunion, or a bridesmaid's bedroom.
Here we're in a diner that's fallen on hard times. We're planted in fertile Inge soil, with wise-crackin' comedy and lots of heartfelt confession. Sentiments are crocheted like a Hallmark sampler and appear at regular intervals to tug the heartstrings or keep us smiling with a tear in our eye. And don't forget the old-timey, crusty cook who always pops out from the kitchen with a sharp retort for the boss. Everybody's got problems - stupid sons, unresponsive husbands, no prospects for boyfriends, money woes, past painful memories - but the show must go on, I mean, lunch must be served.
The three eternal friends, all quite distinct as is the rule for this kind of play, are harried owner Myrna (Cheryl Tanner), downtrodden Charlene (Malinda Beckham), and floozy Leanne (Autumn Woods). David Cleveland is the tart-tongued old codger. An efficiency expert arrives (Daniel Ewetuya), and before you can say fairy godfather, all problems are sweetly resolved. Directed with a sure hand by Tyrrell Woolbert that brings out the women's strong camaraderie, Peaks is sweet but unadventurous. It's not that we've been in this diner before, we've been in this diner too many times - the menu's always the same. This story continues on the next page.
