THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 12, 1996 TAG: 9607120055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: 64 lines
GENERIC THEATER'S ``New Plays for Dog Days,'' now in its third season, is a theatergoer's shopping feast, a potpourri of new scripts. This festival of five world premieres is always an adventure - be it dismal or divine. It's the mixture, and the unpredictability, that encourages ticket buyers to take a chance on new, untried theater vehicles.
Finding new plays is a challenge; untried scripts don't seem to make it to the stage. Go to New York these nights and you'll find dozens of so-called ``revivals.'' Locally, the familiar Neil Simon comedies and Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are repeated so often that they never are away long enough to actually have a revival.
That's why even the failures in the ``Dog Days'' series are interesting.
The opening evening, a bill of two one-act ``dark comedies'' by Dean Monti, is, indeed, a mixed bag.
The opener, ``One Night in a Men's Room'' is a dreadfully dull absurdist wannabe that goes nowhere. It's a funny situation looking for a play.
A woman gets locked in a men's room where she is forced to spend most of the night talking to the custodian, who is intent upon preserving the toilet as some kind of ``cultural landmark.''
The two actors work hard but the simple-minded prattle defeats them at every turn - as if the playwright was so amused by his situation that he refuses to let it evolve into anything more. Lee Beaven Christopher has an Ally Sheedy kind of pertness. William English, who also designed the urinal-dominated set, has a disheveled mad scientist look as he plays the woebegone custodian.
Perhaps, if you have the kindness of a saint, you could see him as a poor soul trying to better his world through fantasy and her as a disillusioned and unloved being. It would take a lot of imagination, though, to see more than pure pretension in this endless drone.
Things get considerably better after intermission with ``Real Human Dialogue,'' a play about a would-be actress who shows up at the home of a theater critic and announces that she's going to commit suicide because of the bad review he gave her.
Susanna Pappa, using a high-pitched voice that reminds us of Mira Sorvino in ``Mighty Aphrodite,'' is a burst of energy as the ditzy ``actress.'' She proclaims that she must rush because she doesn't want her train to miss her and that the best thing about death is that ``you can be in any kind of shape, and you're ready to go.''
Matt Midget is the perfect straight man to her mindless, often hilarious chatter. His degree of levity is a perfect reaction to her irrational wisdom. The energy and timing of ``Real Human Dialogue'' makes up for any lapses in the writing.
One out of two is not bad. The ``Dog Days'' series will open a new play each Wednesday for the next three weeks. ILLUSTRATION: THEATER REVIEW
What: ``One Night in a Men's Room'' and ``Real Human Dialogue''
by Dean Monti, the opening two plays of the third annual ``New Plays
for Dog Days''
Where: The Generic Theater, 21st Street, Norfolk
Who: Directed by Katherine Karbowski and Eric M. Hardie
When: Tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. To be
repeated Aug. 8 at 8 p.m.
How Much: $6
Call: (757) 441-2160 by CNB