Laughs, tears, goose bumps -- superb acting

Balanced, funny and moving, City Theatre's Summer Shorts celebrates the pleasures of theater in miniature.

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

In its annual Summer Shorts Festival, City Theatre offers an illuminating demonstration of the difference between the fun of joke-fueled sketch comedy and the fulfillment of well-crafted short plays.

Yes, at least half of the 16 pieces in this year's festival are funny, a few riotously so.

But both the compact comedies and the serious-minded dramas in each of the festival's two 90-minute programs have a beginning, a middle and an end; rich characters that seem to bring a history to their little moment in the spotlight; and engaging, versatile work from some of South Florida's finest actors. And even the plays that make you laugh hardest have darker, unsettling notes.

A case in point: Rolin Jones' Sovereignty, which begins Program A and sets the tone for a wild ride.

At first blush, cheery Mrs. Elsbeth (Kim Ostrenko) seems like a radiant blond amalgam of Susan and Bree from Desperate Housewives, a woman obsessed with the perfection of the tulips dotting her yard and surrounding her mailbox. Her neighbor, Mrs. Merriweather (Elizabeth Dimon), is a randy woman who likes to accessorize her low-cut outfits with the perfect martini.

A CHILLING TALE

From behind another door come loud thumps and screams. A frightened, dirty boy (Miguel Luciano) emerges to get the mail, only to be cursed once he's back inside. His father (Stephen Trovillion) makes nice with the neighbors, who talk and fret and proceed to ignore the obvious. It's a short but potent allegory, first funny, then chilling, about how many Americans turn a blind eye to the world's troubles.

On the lighter side in Program A are Joshua James' Diplomacy, in which two United Nations representatives (Trovillion and Ken Clement) appear to be discussing a common enemy; Catherine Castellani's absurdist Work, in which a long-suffering office manager (Dimon) prepares a trembling temp (Kameshia Duncan) to serve the overachieving Type A's (Antonio Amadeo, Joe Kimble and Ivonne Azurdia) in a pressure-cooker office; and Eric Pfeffinger's weird Tiny Baby, in which a woman returning to her high school reunion (Ostrenko) brings along exactly what the title implies.

Azurdia and Gregg Weiner play a battling couple on the verge of love in Andrea Ciannavei's The Deep End. Two plays get the tears flowing: Stephen Dietz's September Call-Up, about a baseball fan (Clement) taking issue with his soldier-son (Amadeo) over the young man's willingness to risk his life; and Carmen M. Herlihy's Coffee Break, a piece about a young man and older woman at a support group, gorgeously acted by Amadeo and Dimon.

Program A ends with a showy piece built around Trovillion as the snooty wine critic for The New York Times. Brian P.J. Cronin's I Am Drinking the Goddamn Sun pokes fun at snobs of every type. But when, near the end, Trovillion's Eric conveys the complexity and meaning of the very finest wine, his speech becomes a kind of seductive poetry.

Program B has equal riches. On the wild side, Craig Pospisil's Free finds an anxiety-ridden man (Kimble) stripping down to his underwear on the subway, then flashing everything momma gave him. In Adam Bock's Three Guys and a Brenda, a trio of sensitive ''guys'' (Azurdia, Dimon and Ostrenko) weeps at a nature program on TV, then swaggering Randall (Azurdia) calls the others' bluff by planting a big wet one on their all-business supervisor (Duncan).

POLITICAL COMMENT

New Texas: Or Now That War Is Finally Over, Party On! by Joshua Peskay and Joshua James imagines a dull-witted Dubya (Kimble) contemplating the future with Dick (a hilarious Clement, clad in a bright orange hunter's hat and vest), a charm-oozing Rummy (Trovillion) and the harried Delay (Weiner) in a reinvented Iraq. In Aoise Stratford's The Closet, a cynical purple dinosaur (Clement) tries to explain the facts of rejected-toy life to a nervous sponge (Kimble) as a goofball lavender creature (Amadeo) drives them both mad (their playful costumes, and all the others in the festival, are by Meredith Lasher).

There are serious pieces in Program B, too: Sarah Hammond's lovely memoir of a play, Hum of the Arctic, featuring Azurdia as a deaf woman, Amadeo as an artist captivated by her, and Dimon as her reminiscing daughter; Molly Smith Meltzer's Decoding Fruit, in which a harried author (Ostrenko) and her troubled brother (Weiner) find a way to connect; and Leslie Ayvazian's Rosemary and Elizabeth, the sole example of a brief play that ties things up too neatly.

This year's most unforgettable play is Labor Day, 1968, Terri Wagener's piece about a Southern oil man (Trovillion) paying a hurried condolence call on a black woman (Duncan) whose husband was killed on the job. In its very short running time, the play manages to smash through pleasantries and stereotypes to get to insight.

The acting company is sublime, as is the work by seven directors and the festival's designers. Michael Amico's handsome, moveable doors become the portals to all the laughter and tears that Summer Shorts so ably delivers.