A Couple of Great Shorts at Carte Blanche

The Village Playhouse of Wauwatosa continues its long-lived Original One-Act Festival this year from Carte Blanche Studio Theatre. With minimal set against a cream city brick backdrop, 2.5 hours pass like 90 minutes. As with most shorts programs, it's kind of a mix. Here's a look at the 28th Annual festival:

Beyond The Wall

The story of a second Adam and Eve in a second paradise walled off from the rest of the modern world has some kind of potential. The script really do like terribly good job of bringing that potential life. The acting doesn't do a terribly good job of tricking the thoroughly uninspired script into being very good. That being said, it's difficult to imagine performance that would have made it seem entertaining. The big problem is that the themes covered here aren't anything new and the early part of Genesis has been done to death. There's just nothing new in Beyond the Wall.

Maps

Annetta L.  Martin's drama about a girl, her autistic younger brother and her alcoholic mother. Alejandra Gonzalez is compelling as a girl looking to move far away from the Midwest to go to college. James Sullivan has a pretty solidly believable dynamic with her in the role of her younger brother, but the script fails to handle the central conflict provided by her alcoholic mother in anyway that was anything other than cliché.  So it ended up feeling substantially flat.

Information Station

The program starts to gain some momentum with W. Patrick Fogarty's pleasantly surreal concept. Niko King plays an attendant at an information kiosk with remarkably specific details on how to achieve happiness. King is a lot of fun in the role, which is really important as the script has her handling most of what goes on in the story.

How to Kill Your Husband

In final short before intermission, Five women get together for cards in an episodic comedy. They try to come up with the best way to do away with an evidently lazy husband. In a series of scenes, the comedy takes on a Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner format. The comedy in the script was pretty dry and the ensemble hadn't find found a decent way to deliver the comedy in a way that would work.

Aside from a few moments in this short and performances by King and Gonzalez, I didn't much care for the first half.

Late Night Phone Call

One of my two favorite shorts on the program has Clarence Aumend and Sharon Nieman-Koobert as husband and wife awoken by a very, very significant call. It's a straight ahead drama that is cleverly concise. Playwright Jack Douthitt delivers a very lean and simple story that is well-executed here. 

The Great Jimmy Boyle

Erico Ortiz has warmth and wit as the title character here--a man who works in telesales from his own home. Sarah Oldenburg is a lot of fun here as his romantic interest--a woman young enough to be his daughter who wears a name patch to work. Normally it can be really difficult to make a romance like that work onstage, but Ortiz and Oldenburg manage the right delicate balance to make it work. Things become complicated for them when a brilliantly-poised Jamee Lenzen shows up as a very, very precise lawyer to discuss with them an inheritance, For me, this one and Late Night Phone Call were more than enough to make the rest of the festival worth it . . .

Squeaky

Liz Ewend plays a slow mouse with a strong arm no other mouse wants to have on their baseball team. Paul Weir plays a cat looking to feast on her and her friends. The sensibilities of a Tom And Jerry cartoon are lovingly played out onstage in a staging that doesn't quite have the timing and execution it needs to deliver a satisfying ending to the program. Ewend is so sweet in the title role that this can safely be overlooked.

The Village Playhouse of Wauwatosa's Original One-Act Festival 2013 continues through June 22nd at Carte Blanche Studios on 1054 South 5th Street. For ticket reservations, call 414-207-4879.