Last night's annual Ten-Minute Play Festival at the Hopkins Center's Bentley Theater showcased, in under 80 minutes, seven plays produced and performed by students. The plays were written and submitted one week before the festival, and each play's cast spent a total of approximately two hours rehearsing in the week leading up to the show.
The results were surprisingly impressive. A number of solid performances and clever scripts more than made up for other moments that were less than thrilling. Although the mix of drama and comic inanity in the plays themselves often made the scene changes seem quite abrupt, the lack of uniformity in terms of genre at least kept things interesting.
The Ten-Minute Play Festival first began at Dartmouth "many, many moons ago," according to this year's co-director Matthew Schwartz '06. After spending a few years on hiatus, the festival was resurrected in 2002 and has continued annually ever since. This year, the event fell to Schwartz, Lily King '07 and stage manager Michelle Cohen '08 to continue the tradition.
Schwartz and King started the evening off as "Fy and Guellow," two awfully familiar foul-mouthed stick figures with British accents and nothing nice to say about the president (who the two characters wish was more like Jesus). Adam Frank '09 and Peter Rothbard '09 drew laughs, respectively, as a cowboy-hat-sporting Noah Riner '06 and Jesus himself, complete with makeshift mop-crucifix. The play's fast-paced, random humor demonstrated how quickly 10 minutes could go by. The moral of the story? "Vanessa Carlton sucks."
"Maple Syrup," a play in two parts set on a subway, saw unusually awkward small talk elevated to a heated dispute about the philosophical implications of inquiring about whether or not one likes maple syrup. The play tried a bit too hard to be smart, although it was not without its moments; a discourse on the respective viscosities of "real" and "table" syrup proved bizarrely compelling. Alex Rogers '08 and Eugene Oh '06 effectively upped the comedy in the second part, both delivering irreverent and funny performances as eccentric strangers.
Perhaps the most underwhelming of the festival's offerings, the intriguing but slow "Dear Anton" found three of playwright Anton Chekhov's nearest and dearest struggling to put pen to paper after seeing his play "The Seagull." The play contained no actual dialogue, centering on each character reading aloud from the letter he or she wanted to write to Chekhov. The sincerely acted "Dear Anton" raised interesting ideas about the limitations of language, but the lack of action effectively did in the play. Unlike the first play, it became an unfortunate demonstration of how slow 10 minutes can seem.
A few minutes of ambiguous and cliched sarcastic banter gave way to the most intense subject matter of the evening in "As We Speak," which saw two sisters trying to talk around a drug problem that irrevocably altered their relationship. This well-acted play hit home, although its topic was poorly suited to such a restrictive format.
The undisputed highlight of the evening, "Catharsis or Something," saw Rothbard and Frank as best friends dealing with Rothbard's girlfriend's rejection of his marriage proposal. This laugh-out-loud play again showcased the duo's considerable comic skills; it's easy to forgive them for briefly losing their straight faces (Bellowing "Smutbox" -- the girlfriend's allegedly Norwegian last name -- three times is enough to reduce anyone to laughter.). "Catharsis or Something," neither too long nor too short, represented the ten-minute play at its best.
"Champagne," an original but unextraordinary look at sexual roles, and "So You've Killed a Guy," a kooky, spooky play about a murder that becomes a game show, brought the festival to a close. "So You've Killed a Guy" sees a funny premise descend into absurdity, but good performances almost keep the play entertaining until its nonsensical finale.
Yet overall, thanks to solid acting and well-written scripts, this year's festival served up more hits than misses.
