City Theatre

A little longer Summer Shorts offers an intriguing blend of different genres

By Jack Zink
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Theater/Music Writer
Posted June 13 2007

This just in: The shorts are getting longer.

The feisty, casual-chic performing art fair that is City Theatre's Summer Shorts festival, inaugurated in 1996, ranges once again from the comic to sad, just plain silly to murderously satiric, to tragic. The trend noted in recent seasons continues toward more solid, mature drama in evocative brief stories. Comedy tends to be more pointed even in its more fanciful guises.

And the playlets are averaging about 15 minutes apiece, with seven of the 15 plays unfurling in 100 minutes in Program A, the remaining eight stretched more languidly over 115 minutes in Program B.

Withering satirical attacks are aimed at Disneyland in The Sons of Mickey and Spanish-language soap operas in Donde Esta Pedro Mano? Poignant humanity survives in the face of tragedy in 96 Stitches, about a dress designer virtually enslaved by his best customer, and Flour Cloud, about the survivors of a bakery explosion.

The shortest interlude, Ron Bobby Had Too Big a Heart, is seven minutes (including ballet-like scene changes) of grand guignol humor featuring bloodied prom queens. Other topics include baseballs and bloody noses (Foul Territory), an airport crash scare (Ambivalent), a holocaust survivor's legacy (Uprising), a sequel to The Wizard of Oz (Splat) and more.

This is far more intriguing entertainment than an evening of quickie blackout sketches, although a shorts festival runs the same risks with groaners and headscratchers.

The overall experience remains consistently positive and, as usual, for serious debate or to draw up anyone's list of faves, it's imperative to sample both collections. It's difficult to make distinctions but the slightly shorter Program A weighs more heavily dramatic, even in its comic territories.

The festival's move from the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre to the Studio at downtown Miami's Carnival Center was serendipitous. The Ring, on the University of Miami campus in Coral Gables, is closed for renovations and the Carnival Center's 250-seat convertible, in-the-round Studio offers a similar experience. The Studio is the only venue at the center that directly faces the central plaza, an attractive urban echo of the Ring's campus courtyard. (As has been the case for the past few summers, the Shorts make a trek to the Broward's 595-seat Amaturo Theatre July 12-15.)

The collections represent an impressive list of nationally known and locally based writers. All 15 of the playlets are new to the area, and eight of them are having their world premieres. They're directed by seven different directors and performed by a versatile, rotating ensemble of nine actors (and a quintet of apprentices).

Michael Amico's scenic concepts are minimalist, to work quickly and efficiently with the in-the-round staging. Large color swatches on the back walls add subtly to the visual palette, including Melissa Santiago's lighting.

Properties coordinator Matthew Glass and costumer Erin Amico move matters from the abstract to the specific. Glass adds detail to the stage while Amico's garments vividly depict the characters who inhabit them.

Once again around the water cooler, you're nobody if you can't talk Shorts.

Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.