Last week at the Planet Connections Theatre Festival, running in Paradise Factory from June 15 to July 12, I came across three short plays, all in line with the festival’s mission, which is to create social change through meaningful artistic work.
The most successful of the three was J Train, which was part of a two-play presentation called Tech/Support by Cupcake Lady Productions. The plays are connected thematically by the dramatic question of how technology affects and reflects the modern condition. J Train takes place on the -- you guessed it -- J train, where four strangers find themselves trapped because of a delay. Their frustrations lead them to do something highly unlike New Yorkers – talk to each other. And through dialogue, their stories emerge, fraught with the tensions that all good narratives contain: love, loss, grief, and loneliness. The ensemble cast, Adrian Burke, Stacy D’Arc, William Serri and Hannah Seusy, work well together, playing off against each other. The character development by playwright Dianna Tucker Baritot is excellent as is the clever set design (the NY subway car is replicated with nothing more than a few chairs, a wardrobe rack and the audience’s imagination). The ending, though a bit opaque, does fire by tying up the tropes presented at the top.
Circe, the other installment of Tech/Support, contains a wink-wink ending to a wink-wink beginning. The premise is a familiar one - how far can our relationships go with our phones? Reminiscent of the 2013 Oscar-nominated film Her and binge-worthy Netflix TV show Black Mirror but lacking the surreal charm of the former and the daring of the latter, Circe wavers between being a pseudo-social critique on modern love and a rom-com. Espousing foregone conclusions about angsty relationships between twentysomethings, the cast doesn’t help the writing with their more-off-than-on comic timing. The one exception is Amelia Dudley, who plays the title character, with a winning combination of robotic mannerisms and human motivation. She comes across as more real than the real people.
Real people are at the center of Crave, produced by Black Note Theatre Company. Crave is one of renowned playwright Sarah Kane’s most ‘despairing works.’ In the hands of director Sarah M. Chichester, the despair is made even more inaccessible and performances by the cast render an already difficult play impossible to understand. Sarah Sutliff as A is the only one that makes sense out of the intertextual play and shows Kane for the charged playwright she is. Hers is the only believable despair. Otherwise, the play is an experiment with inconclusive results.
