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REVIEW: "Heller Shorts -- Keep it Brief!"
Published: 8/20/2011 3:06 PM
Last Modified: 8/20/2011 3:06 PM

To keep things brief, two-thirds of “Heller Shorts – Keep it Brief!” is pretty good. As for the remaining one-third, it’s a case of interesting ideas not well executed.

To be more specific and therefore less brief: This is the second year for Heller Theatre, the city’s community theater program, to present a program of original short plays by area playwrights, each taking about 15 minutes to perform. The program not only provides a showcase for writers – some of whom are making their debuts as playwrights – but also gives nascent directors the opportunity to try their hands at staging a piece of theater.

Eight plays by six writers make up the 2011 edition of “Heller Shorts.” One stipulation, implied by the second half of the title, was that each play in some way incorporates a briefcase.

In some plays, the briefcase is object around which the action revolves, as in Rebekah Liston’s “Standard Procedure” (directred by Kristin Harding), in which the second-hand case carried by one character (Philp Guerin) becomes the focal point of an overly zealous airport security guard (Sean Stefanic). Said case also contains something that the woman (Shrae Johnson), waiting in a Japanese restaurant for the man, may find of interest – assuming the man can get the case open.

Johnson also appears in Michael Wright’s “Jumper,” as a woman who happens upon a fellow named George (Kelly Robinson), who is a step or two away from jumping off a bridge to his death. She manages to convince the increasingly inebriated George to explain what has led him to this moment – the loss of job, wife and girlfriend, gambling debts that he will never be able to pay.

It’s a familiar story, but Wright’s play is wonderfully crafted, so that the twist at the end is both surprising and yet satisfying. It also helps that Johnson and Robinson, under Eli Wright’s direction, make these characters very real in the short time they are on stage.

Robinson also has a way of portraying potentially boorish characters in a way that makes them almost loveable. His portrayal of Fred, the ultimate loser in Morgan Belcher’s “Deus ex Icebox,” is maybe the single funniest character of the evening – which is saying something, because this edition of “Heller Shorts” has a plethora of peculiar people in its plays.

Belcher’s black comedy, in which the Almighty (Ione Blocker) has somehow ended up in Fred’s fridge, is itself a plethora of plots – Fred manages to convince a woman (Kaitlyn Hamilton) to visit, who happens to be married to a contract killer (Jeremy Geiger) with a heart of gold, whose latest target is among the people crowding into Fred’s beer can-strewn apartment. It shouldn’t work, but it does, with director Jarrod Kopp maintaining just enough control on the storytelling chaos, so that even the most outlandish aspects of the tale ring true.

Equally good is Kelley Childers Friedberg’s “There’s Something in the Water,” about three workers in an office dealing with student loans. Two of the women (Shrae Johnson and Beka Buster) learn they are pregnant, a condition that prompts them to carry on conversations with a cricket who seems to be chirruping sage advice. It’s the most serious of the eight plays, but as performed by Johnson, Buster and Angela Adams, it is a most effective slice of life.

Wright’s “Fools,” in a circus clown (Belcher) decides to fashion a new character that’s more in keeping with the sense of fear clowns inspire in some people, and Daniel Hitzman’s “ (Open),” about five people trapped in an office building’s elevator, who decide to act out some fantasies to pass the time, are enlivened by some of the performances – Garrett Coats as the overly earnest clown Tubby, Robinson as a 64-year-old businessman who shows a very different side of his character when trapped in the dark with four women.

The weakest of the shows are Stephanie Colburn’s Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Adventure of the Piltdown Man,” and Friedberg’s “The Intervention.” Colburn’s play has Sherlock Holmes confronting his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, about Doyle being the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax.

It could make for an interesting story – about the confluence of “reality” and “fiction,” how a joke might get out of hand just as a fictional character can seem more real than a living person, the battle between science and spirit. But the 15-minutes-or-less format of the evening means that Colburn can do little more than share some Holmesian and historical trivia. Perhaps Colburn has plans to expand this into a full-length play, and give this story the depth it needs.

But I’m not sure what can be done to salvage Kelley Childers Friedberg’s “The Intervention,” a deeply unfunny satire about addiction. Kate McGee is a woman with a jones for garlic – a substance supposedly outlawed two years ago. It’s difficult to determine exactly what point Friedberg wants to make with this play. Is she sending up a reality TV genre, or dismissing the whole idea of addiction itself? The static staging by director Ron Friedberg only adds to the cartoonish quality of the performances.

“Heller Shorts – Keep it Brief!” continues with performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Henthorne PAC, 4825 S. Quaker Ave. Tickets are $10, and as Friday’s performance, which we attended, was played to a capacity crowd, reservations might be in order. Call 918-746-5065.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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