What Do Men Want?

Two one-acts at the Fresh Fruits Festival. The first is a monologue callled Lay Me Down And Love Me Again and the less I say about it the better; I confess that I had no idea what brand of humor it was aiming for. The second, a cute forty five minute satirical chuckle called The Naked Dead Elephant In The Middle Of The Room, lightheartedly spoofs the typical gay play. The conceit is vaguely [title of show]ish, as a playwright at a laptop sweats out the play that we are watching, leading here to a lot of fun, if usually predictable, play-within-a-play business (I laughed the hardest at the successive, increasingly silly on-the-spot revisions of the obligatory sex scene). An especially cranky and verbose theatre critic character is the one-act's crowdpleasing running gag - he periodically pops in to complain about the play thus far - and there's even a small bit when an audience member is cajoled to make a cameo. Unfortunately I lost the insert in my program and can't single out any of the actors, but all four are fun and bring the right spirit to the material.