One-act plays at OVUHS

A scene from Crushed at OVUHS.

I enjoyed the One-Act Plays program at Otter Valley Union High School last night. Most of the plays were directed and performed exceptionally well.

The evening started off with How to Kiss a Girl, which comically explored the role of portable technology on a teenager's first date. It was an enjoyable performance, with a few surprises. Corporate miscommunication and greed were tackled humorously in the second play, The Non-Invisible Man. The acting in this play was simply not up to the same standards as the others, but The Non-Invisible Man had its positive moments. The next play, Crushed, involved two spirits/hallucinations giving relationship advice to a couple of depressed and confused teenagers. This was a well-polished production with some very funny material.

After intermission, Reflex Action delighted (and puzzled) the audience with a fast-moving and expertly designed and performed approach to experimental-theater satire. I would have appreciated better timing in the stichomythia portion of the play, but I can't quarrel the slightest bit with anything else in it 

The evening's finale was David and Lisa, which explored teenage emotional illness. The performances and the between-scenes set work in this emotional drama were extremely professional and precise. (Actors managed to remain in character when lights briefly dimmed between scenes and they were shutting pieces of furniture around the stage.) While this was the most impressive play of the evening, a few things didn't feel right (and none of them can be blamed in any way on the excellent OVUHS actors):

• Subject - This is a fairly superficial approach to some very deep subject matter, and I fear it trivializes emotional illness and the recovery process.
• Length - The length of the play and the frequency of the scene changes were fatiguing, coming as they did at the end of the evening's entertainment.
• Writing - The final moment of the play - expected by the audience from almost the very beginning - falls a bit flat as it results from a conscious choice on the part of the main character rather than as an unintended discovery of a change that his experiences have brought about within him. I realize that a decision to be well is part of the play's theme (David erupts at his psychiatrist when that is suggested earlier), but when a split-second decision can be the resolution of all conflict, it makes all the time invested in the play, its characters and its conflicts seem wasted.  

The One-Act Plays program, running about three hours, will be presented again tonight (Saturday, March 2) at seven o'clock and tomorrow afternoon (Sunday, March 3) at two o'clock at the Otter Valley Union High School auditorium in Brandon. Admission is $5.