Six

A one act is the right place to experiment, and this festival of Six one-acts (part of Second Generation's Eleven series, which also premiered a full-length play and four staged readings) serves as both a warning and a shining example to playwrights looking to find their voice. Most of the plays on display get trapped in their style, but all the same, you have to admire their attempts to be a little different, or little wild. So Sung Rno's The Trajectory of Heart, Fractured loses the connection between two lovers in the central metaphor of an airplane crash; there's still something beautiful in the Victor Maog's staging. Michael Lew's Moustache Guys is a manic mess of mustache cameos (video-game icon Mario and Gangs of New York's Bill the Butcher, to name a few) -- but gosh darn it, it's fun. More importantly, when style melds with substance, as with Julia Cho's Round and Round, the result can be heartbreaking: George (Joel de la Fuente) plays a linguist who simply can't find the words to stop his wife, Mary (Jennifer Ikeda), from leaving him. Kate Whoriskey's direction completes the picture, changing genres where appropriate to emphasize the Romance of it all, or the Tragedy, and this device allows Cho to reset time or to speak to the audience without ever seeming cheesy or out of place.

[Read on]