Throwing one ball, two strikes: play review of 'A Night of One Acts'

By Charles C. Nash

Nevada Daily Mail

Generously sponsored by Coldwell Banker Curtis & Sons, and directed by Sean Nicewaner, CCPA's production of "A Night of One Acts," at the Fox Playhouse in Nevada, is a mixed bag of theatrical tricks. Best of the three one-acters is Tobias Wolfe's "Say Yes," a short, serious examination of race relations in America. "Best" because it is beautifully written and because Charlie Johnson and Kim Bessey, as the main characters, bring Wolfe's words of marital friction believably to life.

Strike one!

The second "strike" is called "Oedi," written by Rich Orloff, described in the program as "Sophocles meets the Marx Brothers in a farcical retelling of the Oedipus Rex story," complete with Oedi's mock horror at having killed his father and married his mother, and Jocasta's (Tracye Moore's) blithe refusal to get upset over a little harmless incest. The play sounds as if it were written as a project for a college class in playwriting and it helps if you're half-way familiar with Sophocles's play. But even if you're not, it's fun to watch, and all the actors are up to speed and that includes the town crier Bob ("There's no such thing as a small part") Ebert. The program explains that "Oedi" has an underlying theme: "the Clinton administration, the White House and Monica Lewinsky." But now that Bill Clinton is history, George Bush's administration will do just as well.

The only turkey in this trio of one-acters is Christopher Durang's "Naomi in the Living Room," a satire of the post-modern family unit in which the theme of emotional problems is quite prevalent." Talk about dysfunctional families! Naomi is a hysterical screamer, her son John is a middle-aged wimp whose emotional problems are big-league and blossoming. If Naomi is the embodiment of everything wrong with the modern family, then her over-the-top performance is justified. But it takes, I think, a genuinely neurotic actress to pull it off, and Tracye Moore certainly isn't that.

Ball one!

There are a few slightly off-color lines in the first one-acter, and parents of young children should be warned. But they're mild enough to ignore.

"A Night of One Acts" will be performed at the Fox Playhouse today, Friday and Saturday. Curtain goes up at 8 p.m.