Short Play Festival winners: three kinds of comedy
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Comedy is a funny thing. The ways in which it operates have been catalogued and dissected by scads of humorless literary professors, whose work I will now emulate by trying to explain how the three winning short plays in the Nantucket Short Play Festival are funny in different ways.

Christy Kickham, left, and Bill Mogensen, right, in "Untitled 2" by Jim Gordon.

The first, Jim Gordon's "Untitled 2," is a cleanly conceived work of situational irony in which two men, played by Christy Kickham and Bill Mogensen, discuss a painting in a gallery. "I don't like the title," says the "liberal" spectator, and so begins a debate over the meaning of the artwork entirely predicated on the men's projections of their own feelings about life. A simple, yet ironic turn at the end of the one-act set the audience to surprised giggles.

Though some of the particulars of the painting could have been swapped out for more juicy, prototypical arguments of the neo-cons and anti-war activists of our time, the play was perfectly attuned to all that it could be, in the short format, and maximized its potential without going overboard.

Mike Smith's "The Ditch," however, is nothing if not intentionally overboard - a sort of "kitchen" sink existential dramedy that overtly references everything from "Waiting for Godot" to "Death of a Salesman." Two friends meet in an open field, where one, played by Neville Richen, has fallen into a metaphorical ditch. Actually, everything in this short play is metaphorical, but here the ditch seems to represent the inability to act in the face of limitless possibilities. Dwight Beman plays the friend who comes along and offers Richen's character a helping hand, only to engage the friend in a verbose and binary debate in which one man represents imagination and the other intellect. Director Eddie Loring maximizes Beman's articulate facial expressions to give this piece the comedic absurdity it deserves, as it seems the author - when faced with the overwhelming question "Do I dare write a short play?" - bombarded the concept of paralysis with a barrelful of peachy dramatic references and lyrical dialogue.

Following all this magical realism is the short play "American Interlude," by Scott Brooks. Probably the standout script of all three winners, "American Interlude" features Theatre Workshop of Nantucket veteran Ciaran Byrne and newcomer Oksana Shastikova as a man and woman at a bar who have an intimate and meaningful encounter while their partners are in the bathroom. The dialogue is smart and funny, while also perfectly believable. Though the Short Play Festival of Nantucket only obligates itself to conduct welldirected staged readings of its pieces, director Meredith Martin went so far as to include dramatic lighting effects and musical lead-ins (Frou Frou's "Let Go," humorously lifted from the moments of romantic awakening in "Garden State"). Byrne and Shastikova develop an entirely believable chemistry in only the few minutes it takes for their status as strangers to develop into something more intimate and recognizable to anyone who is young and still seeking a soul mate, despite all the obstacles - including current partners.

One of the really lovely things about the Short Play Festival is that it offers stage time not only to lesserknown playwrights, but also to actors with little stage experience. It's to the credit of Nantucket Theatrical Productions and Theatre Workshop of Nantucket that the festival managed to bring in some new blood, while also showcasing playwrights with entirely different styles, who managed to make comedy feel different

each time around. I

SHORT PLAY

FESTIVAL

When: Thu. - Sat., May

3 - 5, 7: 30 p.m.

Where: Upstairs at the United

Methodist Church, 2 Centre St.

Cost: $10

For more information,

please call 228-4305.