“Because television sucks” is the slogan for Mask & Bauble’s Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival this year. But even if you don’t want to watch television that sucks, decent actors trying to pull off plays that suck may not be enough to draw you off the couch.
The show opened with Paper Airplanes a play written by Caitlin Lowans (CAS ‘03) and directed by Rebecca Ende (CAS ‘03). It begins with siblings Emily (Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist, CAS ‘03) and Joe (Eric Lashner, CAS ‘05) eulogizing at their grandfather’s funeral. Emily and Joe have had to return to the dysfunctional home of their overbearing and emotionally detached mother, Elizabeth (Laura Collier, CAS ‘06). Their grandfather’s death has dredged up memories of their father’s suicide from years before and brought Emily’s emotional instability to a watershed.
Tarver-Wahlquist and Lashner are convincing as a pair of affectionate, yet emotionally stunted siblings, forced by their mother’s reticence to support one another Collier’s portrayal of the authoritarian mother produces in the audience a disdain comparable to that of Emily’s, who has clearly lost all patience for her antics after years of emotional neglect. Paper Airplanes loses momentum with repetitive lines of halting dialogue and clich?d and overstated plot elements.
The second installment, Guarantee, was written by Matt Bell (CAS ‘02) and directed by Nate Kleinman (SFS ‘04). This short play is a comedy that quickly turns dark when the life history of Tom Fienman, played by Chris Hadjuk (CAS ‘04), is probed by two loan officers, Buckley (Alex Orr, CAS ‘06) and Patricia McGann (Brendan Snow, CAS ‘06).
Fienman enters the loan office expecting quick fulfillment on the guaranteed home loan and with a few strokes of a computer keyboard, McGann exposes Fienman’s past and his irrevocably dismal prospects of a loan, precipitating a provocative yet slapstick mental breakdown.
While Snow’s performance as the frigid receptionist is outstanding, the story’s plot feels incomplete. There is good social commentary in the play-perhaps on the loss of privacy and intimacy in the information age-but it could have used more explanation.
The Disappearance of Jonah, was written by Irish exchange student Darraugh Martin (CAS ‘03) and directed by Michael Kocher (SFS ‘05). The story comes together in a non-linear series of recollections mixed with the in-progress flow of plot events. Jonah, played by Dan Buell (CAS ‘03), is a former high school hero and overachiever who, after his disappearance in New York City, inhabits only the memories of the other characters of the ensemble cast.
The play tells the story of Jonah’s younger brother, Finn (Peter DeVicenzo, CAS ‘03) who travels to New York chasing after his brother’s ghost. Learning from the example of Jonah’s ex-fiance Natalie (Lauren Rauch, CAS ‘05), he begins to formulate an identity separate from the legend that was Jonah. The gradual exposure of the characters’ relationships in The Disappearance of Jonah is an inventive technique, but wears thin during the play’s overlong running time. Phoebe (Kristen Krikorian—SFS ‘04), has a couple of clever sexual innuendo one-liners. Ben, a frustrated writer, is played effortlessly and convincingly by Carlos Valdivia (CAS ‘03). Kerry Gibbons (CAS ‘05) made a winning effort to compensate for her absurdly over-the-top character, Ann: a June Cleaver-gone-psychotic mother.
The One Acts, despite their problems, present an interesting look at the range of student theater—from the mediocre to the interesting and unconventional.
One Acts will be at Poulton Hall Thursday through Saturday nights at 8 p.m. Feb. 20 through March 1.
