Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Acts, Program B

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Atwater Village Theatre
Through July 31

RECOMMENDED

Each year Ensemble Studio Theatre stages a festival of one-act plays written by participants in their writing workshop. Program B is one of three collections of plays available to view.

“Float”

Mary F. Unser based her play “Float” on the real life story (reported in the L.A. Times) of a polio victim from a small town in Tennessee. Devotedly cared for by her parents, she lived her life in an iron lung until one day an electrical storm knocked down the power lines and the machine gave out. When it did, her relatives cranked the machine by hand in an unsuccessful effort to save her life.

Directed by Lee Costello, this two-character play explores the relationship between middle-aged Moxie (Heather Robinson), a polio invalid confined to a machine, and her father Henry (Vic Polizos), an older man not in the best of health, who has stood vigil over his daughter and her iron lung for years.

Though she cannot move, except to turn her head, and her hearing is not the best, Robinson’s Moxie is a brave spirit, with an equanimity that sometimes makes her appear more the caretaker than the one being cared for. But now she’s “tired” — code for ready to slip away, to put an end to life. Polizos’s Henry is a blustery guy, whose whole identity is wrapped up in caring for his child, and who misses the underlying message in their interchange, and her attempts to distract him from doing what’s necessary to keep her alive.

The play, approximately 30 minutes long, is a bit static, given that one of the performers never moves and the other talks a lot about the steps necessary to maintaining the machine. But the acting is solid, from the nuanced Robinson in particular. Polizos depicts a sort of macho guy not entirely comfortable with himself, yet the dynamic that plays out between him and Robinson is a believable one.

“The Mediator”

Writer/director Tom Stringer’s “The Mediator” is a clever character-driven comedy about a good citizen, Paul (William Duffy), who volunteers his time to mediate disputes between angry neighbors. It’s a droll take on the often futile attempts of well-meaning folk to champion reason over rage.

The quarrel that Paul is mediating involves an elderly lady, Mrs. Davis (Eve Sigall), owner of a barking dog, and an exasperated writer (Barry Kramer) who lives next door and is unable to work (or think or sleep) due to the animal’s incessant yapping.

Despite Paul’s best efforts, nothing comes of his labor to reach an agreement, which is stymied by Mrs. Davis’s obduracy and her sly manipulations and underhanded playing of the “I-haven’t-got-long-for-this-world” card. Later Paul copes with a parallel situation in his own life, and once again his patient reasonable approach is thwarted and he’s forced into radical measures that his civilized side would never entertain.

“The Mediator” is one of those plays that makes you laugh because it’s so easy to spot these kinds of behavior in real life, and to identify with the characters. The script is given texture by a savvy comic ensemble, led by Duffy in a spot-on and flawlessly timed performance. And there are three performers — Kramer, Kate Prendergast and Jody St. Michael — who assume two roles, one of which is a dog.  The collective sound design they create as canines deserves its own special award.

“Apocrypha”

Directed by William Charlton, Stephen Dierkes’ uneven but frequently entertaining “Apocrypha” is a collection of sketches lampooning various aspects of Christian myth or dogma. Some of these are familiar —the birth of Jesus in the manger and the sojourn of the three Kings probably being the most ubiquitous. Others are less well-known: for example, the dissention among early Christian theologians in the second century B.C., about which of the early Christian writings constitute legitimate scripture, a dialogue between St Helena (Liz Ross) and her son Constantine the Great (Christopher  Reiling). In the play she lobbies for peace while Constantine is preoccupied with thoughts of war. There’s also a conversation between Dostoevsky (Mark Beltzman) and his daughter (Tamika Katon-Donegal), in which her question about a carnal embrace she observed between Jesus (Michael Hanson) and Lazarus (Kim Chueh) segues into her dad’s reverential recounting of the story of Prince Myshkin (Hanson).

In general, the more familiar one is with the material, the more effective the satire. Notable comic turns among the ensemble include Ray Xifo as one of the Three Kings, Katon-Donegal as Mary, seeking counseling for her troubled marriage, and Hanson, recurring in multiple scenes as a rather clueless savior.

Atwater Village Theatre,  Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater; in repertoire, call for schedule; estlosangeles.brownpapertickets.com or  www.estlosangeles.org.; through July 31. Running time: two hours with a 15 minute intermission.