Theater Review : ‘Act One’ Festival Series Gets Off on the Right Foot

Sponsored by Showtime and currently playing at the Met, “Act One” is an ambitious festival of 15 new one-act plays presented in three evenings that has been ballyhooed as a “marriage” between the theatrical and television communities. If not exactly a shotgun wedding, the nuptials are long overdue.

The plays were chosen from some 2,000 submissions after a nationwide search. Those playwrights selected run the gamut from seasoned hands to relative newcomers.

Despite some flaws, “Evening A” augurs well for the rest of the series. Not that this particular evening didn’t have its share of problems--offstage. Vincent Canby’s “After All” was postponed at the last moment due to an illness in the cast. (Nothing serious. John Randolph, who stars in the piece with Katherine Helmond, was ailing but reportedly on the mend.)

With Canby’s play temporarily out of the lineup, the opener was David Simpatico’s bitterly amusing “Wish Fulfillment,” which concerns a young man’s wild musings about how to tell his father he is gay. Simpatico’s play, well-performed by Kirk Baltz and Jack Wallace, is basically a one-liner, but one that packs a dramatic punch along with the laughs.

Also a bit of a one-liner, “Dice and Cards,” by Sam Henry Kass, is essentially a dialogue between a spectacularly obtuse wiseguy and his exasperated mobster boss. Kass’ amusing but somewhat limited premise is a prime opportunity for a couple of scenery-chomping actors. Robert Pastorelli and Adam Goldberg, in their respective roles as the boss and the buffoon, clearly relish every moment of their feast, as does the audience.

More a character study than a play, David Rasche’s “Jackie” is also very funny although ultimately darker. Diana Bellamy turns in a hilarious performance as Jackie, a chain-smoking good-ol’-gal-turned-Hollywood-agent who spews a Texas-sized gusher of chat that would shame the most outrageous Hollywood schmoozer. Bellamy’s gripping performance, punctuated by a horrible cigarette hack, shows the terrible fear of mortality and failure under the bonhomie.

The final offering, “Sticks and Stones,” is the evening’s set piece. Written by previously unproduced playwrights Drew McWeeny and Scott Swann, the play revolves around a high-powered attorney (Jonathan Silverman) and a racist cop (Louis Mustillo) who is on trial for the hate-slaying of a black youth. (He insists it was in the line of duty.)

Director Jerry Levine and his fine cast plumb the emotional depths in the piece, which poses provocative questions about the nature of racism, the abuses of the press and the lethal power of the spoken word.

* “Act One: A Festival of New One-Act Plays--Evening A,” Met Theatre,, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Sunday, 3 p.m.; Monday, 7:30 p.m.; June 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13. Call for times. (213) 957-1152. $17. (Three-evening pass, $40.) Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.