Pink Banana’s Study in Imperfection

Pink Banana Theatre Company celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The latest in the company’s many shorts programs is populated with characters whose relationships may be at an end. One Acts 2014: The Honeymoon Is Over is a program of eight shorts exploring the theme from a few different angles. Though we do get a few stories of romances long dead, there are more than a couple of shorts that delve into other types of human interaction.

One of the most memorable is local playwright Liz Leighton’s Taps. Alexis Hamburg and Zoe Schwartz play a couple of girls at camp who promise to be as close as anatomically possible forever. Things become comically sophisticated in very short order. Clever stuff. By contrast, After You, by Daria Miyeko Marinelli, was a solidly competent but largely uninspired script about a romantic couple breaking up and moving on, yet the cast rendered it in such beautiful complexity that it comes across as being one of the program’s best. Also of note was Andrew Biss’ The Craft with Grace DeWolff directing Amanda Eaton and Jonathon Weisse as a couple of actors saying what they really mean.

Any series of shorts is going to be uneven in one way or another. Much of the program here is a celebration of flaws. Imperfect scripts about imperfect people in imperfect relationships are staged imperfectly for an admittedly imperfect audience. Be this as it may, the production itself is as smooth and precise as Pink Banana has ever managed with a shorts program.

Through June 14 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St.