REVIEW: 10x10 Delivers a Magical Night of Short Plays
Photos by Roman Iwasiwka
“The delightful 10x10 is here in the hardest days of winter to give you a lift and entice you with the promise of sunnier trips over the mountain soon.”
We’ve got snow, sleet, freezing rain turning to ice in February…what they call a wintry mix. A far more welcome and cheering wintry mix – 10x10 New Play Festival – has taken up residency at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield for its 14th edition and it's one of the more pleasing entries in this long, successful series of ten plays by ten different playwrights that are ten minutes long apiece.
The expert directors Matthew Penn and BSC Artistic Director Alan Paul and their ten writers know their way around a ten minute play. Establish the setting, characters and stakes immediately, ignite your rising conflict and drop a surprise in before blackout. Sounds easy, right?
10x10 Queen Peggy Pharr Wilson, who has acted in all 14 10x10s, returns with other veterans Robert Zukerman, Matt Neely and fresh faces Raya Malcolm, Lori Vega & Xavier Reyes.
These are some seriously talented and adept actors; not only can they make you laugh easily and move you with minimum setup but their protean flexibility bouncing from situation to situation with commitment and honesty is astonishing. Reyes opens with the first three plays after performing the opening song which takes on Les Mis as One Play More (lyrics by Matt Neely). No wonder the 10x10 casts have won Berkies (The Berkshire Theatre Critics Awards) for Best Ensemble.
The opening play, Ordained by Mark Harvey Levine, is a perfect example of the ten minute play. Four chairs in a line and two actors seated apart with their luggage and we are in an airport. Peggy Pharr Wilson enters asking if Raya Malcolm and Xavier Reyes are single and proceeds to try to marry them because she has just been ordained online. The absurdity, confusion and happy aggression make for a nice ridiculous conflict with a delicious conclusion.
There’s a nice, complex Ayckbournesque Choosing You by Rachel Lynett which sees Malcolm shuttling between two different partners (Reyes & Vega) and time periods merely from walking four steps stage left or right from dining table to couch.
Wilson and Zukerman also sweetly look at a proposed past relationship in Senior Prom by Robert Weibezahi that never was and where and how they have wound up with their different choices.
Reyes delivers his drunk uncle, Zukerman (bravely being dragged on his back), to a Pittsfield Fire Department official, Neely, in Safe Haven by James McLindon misinterpreting public works abilities to intercede and protect us from the widening public divisions in American life. The play may have gotten the warmest reception of the afternoon and it was a perfect kick-off to the second act.
The common truism about a short-play evening is that if you don’t care for the one you’re watching, it’s a short wait until the next one comes along. I had no such impatience at this bright, entertaining, thoughtful performance which also had pieces by BSC veterans Jessica Provenz & Brent Askari.
The delightful 10x10 is here in the hardest days of winter to give you a lift and entice you with the promise of sunnier trips over the mountain soon.
10x10 New Play Festival is playing at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center at Barrington Stage Company through 3/16. Tickets: www.barringtonstageco.org or 413-236-8888
