THEATER REVIEW : Trio of One-Acts a Hit-and-Miss Proposition

Celebration?

Or demoralization?

The West Coast Ensemble’s annual “Celebration of One-Act Plays” concludes with three timid works that showcase screenwriting more than playwriting. The writing in Series “C” is depressingly obvious, ranging safely from the sentimental to sitcom to Spielbergian fantasy. Hopefully, American playwrights are more courageous than these pieces indicate, and aren’t merely seeking ways to use the stage as a platform for reaching the screen.

Charles Evered’s “It’s Kinda Like Math” depicts a visit to a psychiatric hospital room where a patient silently makes paper angel figurines. David Mark Peterson is a poignant mute, suggesting a terrible and private tragedy with an impressive economy of gesture. Kerry Haynie’s unfortunate task is to deliver all of Evered’s prosaic dialogue. Director Claudia Jaffee never quite finds a balance between the extrovert and introvert. But when one character is required to carry the weight of a play, the monologue had better soar; instead, these lines slink into sentimentality.

Holly Sklar’s “Don’t Throw Bouquets at Me” begins with considerable promise. In the powder room of New York’s Plaza Hotel, bridesmaids attempt to escape a tacky wedding party. What begins as an insightful character study descends into an insecure struggle for laughs.

Sklar seeks to imitate Wendy Wasserstein, but her acute observations get undermined by one-line jokes. We may not have been in a powder room before, but we’ve certainly seen this behavior on television.

“Listen to the Lightning” evokes genuine pathos--for its first half. Then playwright Robert Canning, reluctant to confront unpleasant truths about mortality, chooses to placate the audience with sentimentality and fantasy. His story takes place on a Kentucky farm, and is narrated by an adult woman (a harrowing Thyra Metz) looking back on an episode in her adolescence. We watch her as a teen-ager (a poignant Ferrell Marshall) who lost the ability to speak after losing her father. The exciting theatricality of hearing the adult speak for the signing teen-ager soon dims, especially once the father’s ghost materializes. Suddenly, we’re in an episode of “Twilight Zone” instead of a heartfelt examination of grief and healing.

Hopefully, next year the West Coast Ensemble’s selection process will be more rigorous.

* “Ninth Annual Celebration of One-Act Plays” Series C, West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m. Ends Friday. $15. (213) 871-1052. Running time: 2 hours.