Last weekend, a one-night-only fundraising performance of An Evening of 10 Minute Plays entertained an almost capacity crowd in Millbrook.
Eleven short plays were directed by eleven veteran and first-time directors, several of whom are members of the Millbrook Community Players' Board of Directors. -- Using minimal furniture and props, and with musical interludes during blackouts to make the changes, the eleven short plays kept audiences entertained by the mostly comical vignettes.
Whether the subject was, for instance, a different take on the Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" duologue, or families disagreeing on what to get rid of in "The Garage Sale", or studying the afterlife of "sinfully challenged" people in "Better Living Through Reincarnation", or analyzing our dependence on cell phones in "Status Update", each piece took off in a new direction and kept the audience with them all the way.
Highlights were: "Marriage...After Death" in which the ghosts of a man [Lee Bridges] and his two former wives [Misty Bone and Donna Young] dissect their relationships with building animosity and unexpected comic results; "What's in the Box", in which a man [Kevin Morton] escalates the frustration of a woman [Carol Majors] who wants to know the contents of a box he's holding, only to be repeatedly told "Nothing"; the excessive absurdity of "1-800..." in which a customer [Michael Snead] tries to pay a bill but is confronted by an off-stage disembodied voice prompt [Shea Jackson] that takes on very human emotions in her responses to his agitation.
By far the most entertaining and clever "The History of Television, Condensed" is both a hilarious mock-history that starts in "caveman days" and continues to the present; a father son duo -- Kevin and Jesse Morton -- are spot on in comic timing, adept at physical pratfalls, and conscript the audience in their antics. Well done.
An enjoyable evening that hopefully raised some money for upgrades to the Millbrook theatre.
