STAGE REVIEWS : There’s Just One Dud in Celebration of One-Acts

The West Coast Ensemble’s eighth annual Celebration of One-Acts--featuring premieres of six plays selected from more than 200 entries and presented in two rotating series (A and B)--is, with one exception, pleasingly consistent in quality.

While not high on experimentation, the festival menu is notable for solid dialogue, crisp staging and lean production lines. Sets are spare if not bare, and the festival’s two comedies, “Fast!” and “Blind Date,” feature actors inventively pantomiming with invisible props.

Three of the one-acts are distinguished achievements: Christopher Kyle’s “Dessert at Waffle House, Breakfast Anytime,” William Babula’s “Basketball Jones” and Tanis Galik’s “The Blind Date.”

Arguably the most ambitious is “Dessert at Waffle House,” directed by Steven Avalos, a mellow tone poem set in a late-night diner and nearby bar. Four lonely characters in assorted stages of malaise are touchingly rendered by Lawrence Cord’s frustrated guardian, Tom Stanczyck’s uncanny performance as Cord’s semi-retarded sibling, Heidi Ahn’s enduring waitress and Julia Silverman’s adventurous but unhappy boozer.

The most dynamic work is “Basketball Jones,” about the seamy side of college sports, set in a coach’s office. It crackles under the direction of Gammy L. Singer, with Forrest Witt’s snarly coach, Christopher B. Duncan’s idealistic player corroded by the system, and a nice supporting turn in Fred Slegers’ about-to-be-cut token white boy. (Playwright Babula is a campus insider: He’s dean of arts and humanities at Sonoma State University.)

The funniest play is “The Blind Date,” a rusty concept buffed up here with a wicked twist: Two nervous wrecks (humorous Sharon Corbett and Nicolas Mize) are not seen during their date but rather in preparation for it, primping and dressing in front of invisible mirrors. Galik’s ear couldn’t be sharper and Ann Farthing’s direction deftly captures the intricately overlapping voices.

The best of the remaining group is A.E.O. Goldman’s “Fast!” (featuring the attractive pairing of Cheryl McWilliams and David Fabrizio), an inventive verbal exercise in fast romance conducted in fast-speak in a fast-food joint. Shellen Lubin’s “Anthesis” (the first act of a projected two-act play) is a quite unlikely love story between a retired teacher and a young school custodian (Garth McLean and Angela DeCicco). It stretches credulity.

As for the festival’s one lingering thud, William Scheer’s “Before Eva” (with embattled lovers David Mark Peterson and Andi Matheny) is shrill, pretentious and exasperating. Probing a husband’s struggle with faith, salvation and a wife who tests positive for AIDS, and compounded by a droning priest (Paul Van Zyl), it’s fortunately slotted as the last play in Series B--staged any earlier, it might drive patrons to ankle the theater.

* West Coast Ensemble Celebration of One-Acts, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. $12-$15. (213) 871-1052. Running time of each performance: 2 hours.

Series A: “Basketball Jones,” “Fast!,” “Anthesis,” Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 10-11, 15-16, 19-20, 24-25, 29-30 and Oct. 3-4.

Series B: “Dessert at Waffle House, Breakfast Anytime,” “The Blind Date,” “Before Eva,” tonight-Friday, Sept. 8-9, 12-13, 17-18, 22-23, 26-27, and Oct. 1-2 .