Carte Blanche New Plays Festival

As the winter begins to look and feel like the winter, local stages are given to many, many shorts. Last week, the Milwaukee Rep opened its Rep Lab shorts program. This weekend, Carte Blanche Studios opens its Witer Edition of the North American New Plays Festival. The festival is separated out into 3 blocks of shorts the alternate over the course of the run of the festival, which continues through the end of the month.

The festival opened with “Block 2.” It was a really sharply modulated mix of comedy, surrealist drama and quasi-experimental stuff. Here are a few impressions:

Package Deal by C.J. Ehrlich of New York. Josh Devitt and Michelle Paura play two teachers on what they’d hoped to be a romantic vacation. It turns out that the vacation package to a tiny Eastern European nation isn’t quite as romantic as Devitt’s character might’ve expected. A cute comedy with an appearance by Sally Marks as the Eastern European hostess. Ehrlich has difficulty modulating the comedy from beginning to end in kind of a weak comedic structure, but Devitt and Paura make the best of it. They have difficulty modulating between the heartfelt emotions and the over-the-top surrealism of the premise, but that’s a difficulty originating in the script of an otherwise enjoyable comedic piece.

Bogey and the Dame by Jacqueline Golfinger of Philadelphia. The work of Dasheiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler is extremely good. So good is their work that the idea of trying to emulate their style in any way is extremely comic. And so more people are aware of the hardboiled detective style of narrative through all of te many, many parodies that have come after their work. This one has Derek Worepel playing a sharply charismatic Bogey-esque character who has come to run into a hard boiled femme fatale sensually played by Laura Holterman in dueling monologue format.  There are a few genuinely good lines in here, but for the most part it’s just a fun little bit of comedy. 

Bar Car Reverie by Nina Mansfield of Connecticut. Laura Holterman shows up again as a variation on the same sensuous character in the same classy costume as a man played by Thomas Moore wakes up in a bar car. He would be dressed in perfect business professional were it not for the fact that he’s not wearing any pants. The man tries to figure out what happened in a scene also featuring a big drunk (played by Jerome Maywald) and a little girl (charmingly played by actual little girl Nadyah Kornfehl.) Sometimes in order to figure out  what’s going on, you just HAVE to break the fourth wall. Kind of a fun dramatic piece.

A Day In The Life by Emily Craig of Milwaukee. This is kind of a fun premisethe concept of a guardian angel from heaven is kind of vaguely rendered one in most people’s minds. Craig cleverly tries to flesh that out a little bit. Evidently Those who die get an assignment with a gruff, cigar-chomping head of HR played with just the right amount of mid-twentieth century workplace seediness by Jerome Maywald. The unlucky among them get assigned to watch over cats as is the fate of an unlucky guy played by Glenn Widdicomb. Others might find themselves shepherded by someone on his way up (a generally pleasant Thomas Moore with a serviceable southern accent.) However, if you happen to be a remarkably attractive woman (like Liz Whitford) evidently you still have to put up with sexual harassment in the workplace of heaven. So the afterlife is more of the same, just with a different perspective. It’s a fun concept that almost feels like a pilot to a sitcom that will never be made. 

Das Boots by G.E. Smith of Dallas, Texas. This short may be the first thing I’ve ever actually liked that had come explicitly from Texas. It’s kind of a surrealist, quasi-experimental theatrical ode to boots . . . and death, actually. Boots and death. Peter Smith, who actually played a silent role I failed to mention in Bar Car Reverie, does the silent thing in this one too as the back of Vincent Van Gogh doing a painting of boots. Josh Devitt engages with him a bit. Boxes and boxes and boxes of boots are poured ut onto the stage. Mike Keiley comes out to engage with them and the memory of where they came from in particularly striking passion. Liz Whitford delivers a couple of monologues . . . one as the owner of a particularly nasty lost cat and another as Agnesthe widow of a somewhat fictionalized version of Wild Bill Hickok. Not a traditional narrative piece, but that’s what I absolutely loved about it. And Whitford delivers a really nuanced and compelling pair of monologues.

Snip by Michael Weems of Spring, Texas. Block 2 ends with a simple domestic sitcom. Derek Woerpel plays a man somewhat immobilized on a couch. Ellen Dunphy plays his wife, who comes home to slowly discover the nature of his illness. Dunphy and  Woerpel are fun as husband and wife in a light, inconsequential bit of comedy that would be perfectly at home in any domestic sitcom. A nice, comfortable way to exit the theatre for Block 2. 

Carte Blanche Studios’ North American New Plays Festival Winter 2012 continues through January 29^th. For ticket reservations, visit Carte Blanche Online. “Block 2,” (reviewed above) repeats on Matinee Sunday the 22^nd and Saturday and Sunday night of the 28^th and 29^th.