In only 13 years, the Barrington Stage Company’s short play festival, “10x10”, has become one of the most anticipated theatre events of the winter. You have until March 10 to find out why.
“10x10” is an event that never disappoints. The format is simple. It’s ten original plays that are each about ten minutes in length and are offered in five play chunks, with an intermission separating them.
It flies by and you are in and out of the theater in two hours. The best part is there is no pressure. The individual plays are long enough to be great fun or plant a seed for serious thought, but short enough not to be boring.
Plus they have been curated for variety as well as quality. This year there seems to be fewer comic-like skits and more dramas that function as mini-plays. All entertain as much as they enlighten.
There is no set theme for the evening, but usually one evolves. This year it appears to be love. Love lost, love recovered and love discovered. They deal with mature love, maternal love, young love and same sex love. They are touching, comic and sincerely thoughtful.
Even the frivolous includes a wise observation. “The Consultant,” concerns a mature couple who won an auction for a session with a sex coach. The discomfort of the long married couple generates natural built in laughs, but the work makes you realize taken-for-granted relationships sometimes do need help.
One of the best things about this opening skit is the performances of Peggy Pharr Wilson and Robert Zukerman. Wilson has been part of the festival for every one of its 13 years. Once again, the “Queen of the One Acts” makes every play she appears in, a terrific experience.
Zukerman, her husband in the work, again proves himself one of the finest character actors working in the Berkshire, and beyond.
In “Snow Falling Faintly,” Wilson Pharr is absolutely brilliant as a widow made of flint finding a way to teach her older son how to survive in life. The beauty of her performance is she how she gingerly expresses her love for her son by being open enough to learn from him as they shovel snow together.
Zuckerman shines in “Meeting Fingerman” in which he plays a revered Jewish short story writer. He is forced to offer a wide range of emotions when he agrees to critique a short story written by a young man who idolizes him.
In both plays, the older actors have the younger Ross Griffin as a scene partner. He is absolutely perfect playing foils. However, he proves he too has star quality in the solo piece “Can I Tell You a Story?”
Sitting on a park bench he tells of his annual pilgrimage to all the places he and his deceased male lover found important. It’s a tale of grief and love that thanks to Griffin refuses to be maudlin.
Matt Nealy is another returning veteran who has 11 years of experience with the short play festival. He’s the epitome of the buttoned up Yuppie who finds himself in complicated comic situations. He and Gisela Chipe are a delight as a computer-matched couple who express their doubts about meeting - immediately before they meet.
Chipe and Naire Poole make solid contributions in other plays, like “The Mount Greylock Fish Hawk Squawk.” In this work the entire cast play three couple who get lost on a hike. The older couple help them find their way out of the woods and out of troubled relationships.
Meanwhile, Poole offers a touching performance as she plays a young woman preparing for an abortion in “The Welcome. She also has fun as a runaway bride who seeks help from a former boyfriend in “I Don’t.
She is good in a supporting role in “High Time,” a clever play about an older couple reliving old times in a legal drug dispensary.
The play is bookended wonderfully with an untitled opening parody of the festival sung to “Summer Nights” from “Grease.”
It closes with the close-to-home piece about a writer being tortured by other members of his playwriting support group who critique his work.
Indeed, in a review focusing on performance, the quality of the writing should not go unmentioned. Each play offers its own unique pleasures and all are a complete and satisfying experiences.
And, if you only like eight of them, you’re way ahead of the game.
“10x 10” continues through March 10. For tickets and schedule information go to barringtonstageco.org
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
