Love Struck

In Dale Griffiths Stamos' Love Struck, seven one-act plays about love, a large number of actors perform in a variety of settings that include a Catholic confessional, a nursing home, a living room and the office of a matchmaking service. The size of the cast, combined with the logistics of so many scene changes, creates problems for director Maggie Grant that she struggles to overcome, not always successfully (it doesn't help that she also acts in two of the scenes).

The playwright also makes things difficult for herself by tackling her central theme in a formulaic way: in at least two of the seven scenes, a vain, overbearing and pompous guy who thinks he's God's gift to women gets his comeuppance from the opposite sex. In two other scenes, drastic psychological problems -- dementia, split personality -- are revealed and resolved, all too quickly and neatly.

This isn't to say, though, that Love Struck is without redeeming qualities. In "Jeremy's Fear," a young man (Eric Charles Jorgenson) who has just buried his mother delivers a powerfully written monologue dealing with the homosexuality that she and the church he once loved could not tolerate. And in "Identity," another tormented young man learns something shocking -- yet ultimately liberating -- about the man he thought was his father.<

Uneven as Stamos' seven plays are, they are acted spiritedly (especially in their comic moments) by the large, dedicated cast.