DATE: Friday, August 15, 1997               TAG: 9708140199

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 15   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Theater Review 

SOURCE: Montague Gammon III 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

MONOLOGUE FESTIVAL LETS REGENT STUDENTS DISPLAY THEIR TALENTS

Regent University students got to display an appealing blend of writing, acting and directing talents in the second annual Monologue Festival, part of this summer's A.C.T.S. Series.

The young authors, who often performed their own works, were especially interested in sentimental reminiscences, in comically obsessive characters and in satire.

In the first category fell Joleen Neighbors' ``Storm Warnings,'' ``Show and Tell'' by Jean Laidig and ``Aunt Jo'' by Jennie Von Buseck.

``Storm Warnings'' was a quietly interesting recitation of a young woman's ability to turn her childhood fear of thunder into an aesthetic appreciation of the weather's power.

``Show and Tell'' could easily be a metaphor for the essentials of acting. The unique perspective and personal commitment that a slow-witted boy brought to his show-and-tell presentation of a simple stick made that presentation forever memorable for the character who Laidig played.

Von Buseck closed the Monologue Festival with ``Aunt Jo,'' a young adult's particularly sincere address to the spirit of a dead relative.

Characters whose obsessions made for amusement were the focus of ``Grocery Shopping,'' written and performed by Laidig, ``A Singular Kind of Guy,'' written by David Ives and performed by Micah Thomas Mountague, Paul Patton's three-part series called ``The Further Adventures of Marlene Masters'' performed by Eileen Boarman, Neighbors' ``Chili Pepper Prayers'' and Bryan A. Haggerla's ``Temporary Insight.''

``Grocery Shopping'' followed a woman who believed that Luke Skywalker, or other media characters, kept her company as she shopped. The writing might have been inspired by a similar Christopher Durang piece, but Laidig followed an original path to a sympathetic characterization.

The ``singular guy'' whom Mountague sensitively portrayed believed he was, at heart, a typewriter. He had the good fortune to tell his tale to a woman willing to say she was a sheet of paper.

Patton created a young woman who found new reasons for every failure to find a career, and an equal number of reasons to believe that her next venture would be a success. Boarman was on target with the character's heavy New York/New Jersey accent, her unceasing gum chewing and her unflagging hope.

``Chili Pepper Prayers'' was the attempt of a self-absorbed substitute teacher to tell her teen-age charges about the power of prayer for personal gain. Taken with Neighbors' other appearances, it gave a hint at the variety of characters this young actress can play.

``Temporary Insight'' was a more unsettling piece. Hagerla played an unemployed and egotistical college teacher whose fascination with the temp agency receptionist on the other end of his phone line sounded a bit dangerous. One assumed he was out of work because he habitually engaged in such behavior, but one wondered why the beleagured woman on the other end of the line didn't just hang up.

While satire was part of many monologues, it was the heart of ``N.R.S.A.'' This funny set of three speeches given at the ``Nursery Rhyme Sister Association'' envisioned a politicized gathering of familiar characters who variously called for a strike against Mother Goose's unfair management, related their personal woes, or exhorted their fellow characters to personal improvement.

Jennie Von Buseck wrote all three, appearing as the strike-calling Little Miss Muffet. Chuck Goodin was a delightfully sad-sack Jack Be Nimble, whose nimbleness hadn't spared him from incapacitating injury. As Jill, Joleen Neighbors played a fervent apostle of self-improvement who had risen from where she and ``her man Jack'' had once tumbled.

Four of the monologues were less easy to categorize. ``The Audition,'' a bit of theatrical apocrypha listed as having unknown authorship, gave Mara Francis a chance to show how careful, astute acting can firmly control the tone of a performance.

``The Little Man,'' written by Trish Lawler and affectingly performed by Matt Midgette, was a charmingly sentimental, though not cloying, piece about childhood religious devotion.

Don Payne gave an enjoyable reading of Kipling's fable, ``The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo,'' and related an informative, interesting historical narrative that he had written about ``The Alamo.''

Though the Monolgue Festival was described by Goodin in his introductory speech as ``theater in the raw'' and was presented under the heading of ``Low-Maintenance Theatre,'' there was nothing unfinished or rough about the closing night performance and plenty of praise. MEMO: For more information on the A.C.T.S series taking place at Regent

University this summer, call 579-4245.

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