Together, Plays Lack Dramatic Weight

The four plays in the 10th annual one-act festival at Theatre 40 are all well staged and diverting. Taken as a whole, however, the bill lacks dramatic heft.

The most challenging offering is the L.A. premiere of Arthur Miller’s “Elegy for a Lady,” directed by April Webster, concerning the cryptic conversation between an upscale boutique owner and a man who suspects that his younger mistress is dying. Despite beautifully restrained performances by Michael Forest and Amy Beth Cohn, the play is metaphysically half-baked and aphoristically weary, a negligible entry in Miller’s canon.

Flora Plumb directs the evening’s opener, Eric Lane’s “A Bowl of Soup,” a sweet but predictable drama about the bumbling efforts of a man (George C. Simms) to comfort his grief-stricken brother (Wilson Bell), whose loss is only gradually revealed. David Lindsay-Abaire’s “How We Talk in South Boston,” directed by Stewart J. Zully, is a sitcom-like spoof about prejudice featuring a South Boston couple (David O’Shea and Penelope Windust) so iconically blue-collar, they make Archie and Edith Bunker look like Will and Ariel Durant.

The closer, Jane Anderson’s “Tough Choices for the New Century,” hilariously staged by Rick Sparks, is a sidesplitting sendup of millenialist paranoia that is by far the most successful offering. John Durant, Kathy Jensen and Justine Reiss are your hosts for this funny, genuinely creepy seminar about how best to prepare for the coming cataclysm. Hint: Ditch your ceramic collectibles and invest in tatami pillows. Oh, and be sure to pack heat.

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* The 10th Annual Theatre 40 One-Act Festival, Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. $12. (323) 936-5842. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.