Actors Alliance Festival 2004 - Program 7

Program #7 of the Actors Alliance Festival 2004 brings to an end the orgy of one-act plays. It was fun, well representing local playwrights, local directors, and local talent. Tonight's program opened not with a play, but Fredi Towbin's amusing stand-up "Molly, With a `Y.'" While charming, with plenty of laughs, I felt like I was at the Comedy Club and not a festival of one-act plays. Towbin entered from the audience with her walker and regaled us with the observations of a New Yorker transplanted to California.

Towbin penned Sunday in L.A, directed by Charlie Riendeau and starring Jack Missett and Jill Drexler with Patrick Wenk-Wolff. What happens when two totally dissimilar people meet on a blind date. He had lost his wife within the last year and was still in the recovery stage. She, a bleached blond frivolous type, was strangely upbeat, and totally flamboyant. She claimed to be 56 years old, but as time passed, admitted to 65. They had absolutely nothing in common only to find they did have a major something in common.

David Mamet's The Shawl, under the direction of Ted Ewing, was the evening's third entry. Ralph Dobson plays a con-artist-psychic who preys on a client, Cristina Soria. In the second scene, he explains to his lowlife partner, played by James Steinberg, just how he intuits revealing facts about his pigeon. The final scene pits him against her in a duel of wills. This is classic David Mamet.

Matt Scott and Jason Connors wrote and starred in The Two-O'Clock, directed by George Ye. Scott plays a drunk, suicidal shrink to the stars. His Two-O'Clock appointment is played by Connors, a Lakeside punk actor currently making a brief flash in Hollyweird. The contrast between the two is delightfully dynamic as Scott, almost comatose, can hardly communicate with hyperactive Connors, an actor so into himself, reality doesn't have a chance to enter his mind. Community theater, Theater in San Diego, and much else is properly scathed by the show.

Dirty Russian Sex Talk, amusingly written and directed by Barbara Chronowski, has two Russians, played by Michael Grant Hall and David Radford, living in the U.S. They are men, they are heavily into their Vodka, girly magazines, and a bit of phone sex. The amusement comes from their heavy Russian accents, interpretations of the American sub-culture of male stimulation, and primarily from the misuse of the English language. They culminate their fantasies by hiring a masseuse, Helena Lesko, who is into much more than a simple back rub. Dirty Russian Sex Talk was a charming exclamation point ending the seven programs of the fest. See ya next year.