Indecent Acts

A quartet of short plays rides both sides of the line separating the combative from the sophomoric. Writer-director Coleman Hough’s “Glancing at the War” looks at two performance artists (Erin Fleming and Elizabeth Liang), respectively playing Miss America and Miss Diagnosis prepping to go onstage and letting slip the horrors of their personal lives amidst stretching and elocution exercises. It features taut performances by both women, and Dan Wingard as some kind of crazed production assistant – call it old news well delivered. Jason Grote’s “Luna” is a creation myth about the origins of the Sun and the Moon (David LM McIntyre and Mandi Moss), told with deliberate, inarticulate clumsiness by the subjects of the legend and cokehead narrator (Terry Tocantins). It features similarly appealing performances, directed with choreographed whimsy by Amanda D’Angelo. Boo Killerbrew’s “True Love Waits” takes the single joke of lonely women (Linda Graves, Grace Eboigbe and Krista Collins) throwing a bawdy bachelorette party before their marriage to a beer-swilling Jesus (Tocantis). In Tim Banning’s lascivious staging, the play rides the joke for all it’s worth, and all it isn’t. Eboigbe’s tender Judy stands out amidst the fearless ensemble. Rosalyn Drexler’s “Room 17C” melds Kafka’s Metamorphosis with Arthur Miller’s "Death of a Salesman" by plonking Linda Loman (Shana Ledet Qualls) in a squalid motel room with cockroach Gregor Samsa (a physically dextrous performance by McIntyre). Biff (Joe Roche) also shows up, and gets mad. If there’s a larger purpose to this literary etude about the seediness of existence, it crawled by me. Karen Jean Martinson directs. Fridays, Saturdays, 11 p.m. Starts: May 2. Continues through May 31, 2008