While revenge can be a dish best served cold, other than Erik Gernand’s sensitive What Remains of Youth, it is a dish best served as humor at the Source Theatre Festival. If you enjoy comedy, the three works that follow intermission may be your best choice for entertainment among the short play collections. – Steven McKnight
PICNIC ON THE LAKE
By CJ Ehrlich
Directed by Jennifer Mendenhall
If you and your significant other are having a rough patch, it might be a good idea to stay away from secluded locations. Perhaps that’s the moral of CJ Ehrlich’s Picnic on the Lake.
Eric (Daniel Corey) takes Glynnis (Sara Barker) up a mountain to a beautiful spot overlooking a lake for a picnic. They have grievances towards each other which are revealed in their conversation. Their intentions towards each other are not nearly as lovely as the view.
Despite the talented Sara Barker’s best attempts to insert a subtle character arc, Picnic on the Lake is a melodramatic and overwrought short work that depends upon shock for impact. Otherwise, it is not very memorable.
WHAT REMAINS OF YOUTH
By Erik Gernand
Directed by Jarrod Jabre
Sometimes 10-minute plays can feel like skits. Therefore, it is refreshing to encounter a naturalistic and skillful slice of life work like Erik Gernand’s What Remains of Youth.
Sydney (Tori Boutin) finds a short work written by her boyfriend Jacob (Seth Rosenke). Is it a work of fiction or a foreshadowing of a violent college death spree?
Sydney and Jacob engage in verbal fencing as she tries to discern the truth. He denies that the story means anything, but Sydney is troubled by personal details that are true to Jacob’s life and an imminent event that creates a ticking clock of suspense.
What Remains of Youth is a thoughtful work that feels timely without being exploitive (although it is easy to flash to the video filmed by the UC-Santa Barbara shooter). Erik Gernand’s dialogue is natural and the characters are realistic. It is this reviewer’s favorite play in the revenge collection.
WE ARE NOT ANIMALS
By John Kelly
Directed by Jennifer Mendenhall
Three Muslim women take prisoner the operator (Daniel Corey) behind an American drone strike. They are all linked to a victim of the strike: the victim’s wife (Devora Zack), sister (Dannielle Hutchinson), and daughter (Ariana Almajan).
They offer the prisoner an opportunity to take direct action against the alleged terrorist Zodiac (Shravan Amin). Will he have the courage to take direct, face-to-face action, especially when it could have consequences for other innocents?
We Are Not Animals has the germ of a good idea, but the compression of the 10-minute play makes it difficult to translate that idea into a satisfying dramatic work. The three all-knowing and nearly identical women are just props to create a dilemma that feels forced and artificial. The message is given in too direct and didactic a manner.
There have been some satisfying “tables turned” works in recent years. Perhaps playwright John Kelley’s We Are Not Animals could join those ranks if given more time to flesh out the debate and the characters and to build the drama in a realistic manner.
COLLECT EVERYTHING
By Vincent Delaney
Directed by Jarrod Jabre
If you had the opportunity to snoop on people in your own life, could you resist that temptation? If you did, how would you deal with hearing what people say behind your back? That is the intriguing (and ultimately funny) setup of Vincent Delaney’s Collect Everything.
Amira (Briana Manente) works at the National Security Agency with her friend Gabi (Tori Boutin). She moves from listening to intercepts of conversations of world leaders to listening in on her husband Derek (Seth Rosenke) and her mother-in-law (an entertaining Kim Tuvin). Needless to say, their phone calls and messages reveal a different picture than what they say to her face. Deryl Davis rounds out the cast.
Collect Everything is broadly funny and entertaining. If playwright Vincent Delany wants to expand the work, it could serve as the foundation for an appealing farce.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE AND OTHER COSMIC CONSEQUENCES
By A.K. Forbes
Directed by Adi Stein
Those darned alien protectors. Sure, they come to the planet and offer some nice gifts, like the solution to world problems and some neat new technologies, and maybe they even promise immortality. Yet in the end, they just use women for their eggs and then discard them.
Karma (Nadia Mohebban) has had it with being used by men and aliens. When she is “invited” to an alien medical facility, she plans to strike back. She wants people who mistreat her to understand for once that there may be consequences. The only thing that may hold her back is another fellow in the waiting room, the optimistic nice guy Bill (Erik Harrison).
Playwright A.K. Forbes has a found an interesting new way to present relationship humor. Beyond the mere setup, the writing is consistently clever. One of Karma’s long rants about being mistreated led to prolonged audience laughter thanks both to the writing and an entertaining performance by Mohebban.
Collateral Damage and Other Cosmic Consequences is one of the funniest short plays to appear in the Source Theatre Festival. It is a comedic little gem.
FREDDY AND CATHY
By Alyssa Wilden
Directed by Adi Stein
Freddy and Cathy finishes out the revenge series with one more comedic work. The work features a couple trapped in living a stereotypical 1950’s lifestyle for the amusement of an unknown audience.
Freddy (Matthew Sparacino) makes an enthusiastic and hackneyed entrance each day, telling Cathy he’s home (to offstage laughter). Cathy (Sarah Ferris) starts off as the orthodox housewife who is busy with housekeeping and cooking. Over time, however, she becomes discontented with their life and seeks to change the script.
Both Sparacino and Ferris are talented actors who wring maximum laughs from Alyssa Wilden’s script. It’s an amusing closer for the revenge collection of short plays.
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