Little Fish Theatre treats audiences to its 22nd-annual New Play Festival, one whose four fabulous comedy shorts, two powerful dramatic pieces, and only one unfortunate dud add up to an almost entirely winning Pick Of The Vine 2024.

The laughs fly fast and furious in Robb Willoughby’s The Fence, directed by Ryan Knight, an absurdist farce that has a couple of folksy old hayseeds (Shirley Hatton and Don Schlossman) freaking out that young whippersnapper Terrence may have figured out on his own that the sun will still rise every morning even if he doesn’t greet it with song.

Knight also directs Ken Preuss’s touching two-hander A Benevolent Alliance of Mourners, in which a grieving best friend (Ari Hader) and a young woman who makes her living as a funeral singer (Tricia Fukuhara) discover shared connections to the deceased.

Marcia Roberts’ Black Nun Hoodie, directed by Mirai, features Fukuhara as a spacey job seeker whose considerable idiosyncrasies already have her job counselor (Samantha Barrios) pulling out her hair even before the wacky applicant suddenly decides that her career goal is to become a nun.

Act Two opens with Lori Goodman’s Tribal Attire, directed by Knight, in which 20ish Leah (Fukuhara) shocks her appropriately black-clad mother (Hatton) with her decision to attend a family funeral dressed more for a Hawaiian luau than for a somber event, a decision her mom fully expects Leah’s dad (Schlossman) to support until…

Things turn life-or-death serious in James Lindon’s Safe Harbor, directed by Mirai, that has a dedicated OB/GYN (Hatton) squaring off against a hospital lawyer (Barrios) who insists she follow Texas’s strict anti-abortion laws by refusing to operate on a woman almost certain to die from infection if the no-longer-breathing fetus inside her is not immediately removed, a bona fide gut-puncher that features Mueller as the woman’s understandably distraught husband.

Last but not least where laughs are concerned is Laura Neill’s Juliet Wakes Up, directed by Anna Miles, imagining what might have happened had Juliet (Fukuhara) stabbed not herself but poor, presumably dead Romeo (Mueller), with Hader as the spurned Rosaline and Barrios completing the deliciously over-the-top cast.

All of this would add up to  an absolutely perfect, intermissionless eighty-minutes of short-form theater had the powers that be not decided to add Terry Glasser’s Apastron to the bunch, a whacked-out medieval mess of a sitcom whose only laughs are those that can heard in its canned laugh track.

Still, six out of seven ain’t half bad, directors Knight, Mirai, and Miles bring out the best in their casts, and multiple roles each allow all six actors plenty of opportunities to shine.

Dramatic honors go to Hatton’s determined physician, Barrios’ caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place lawyer, and Hader’s authentically grief-stricken mourner.

Hatton, Schlossman, and Mueller had me a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ with laughter in The Fence, while Fukuhara earns Best In Ditz honors for her kooky job seeker and her unhinged Juliet.

Though I can’t help wishing Little Fish had given Pick Of The Vine 2024 better than a bare black-walled stage, lighting designer David Zahacewski, costume designer Miles, sound designer Doug Mattingly, and props designer Catherine Pitt go a long way towards giving the production relatively snazzy look.

Jen Albert is intimacy coordinator and fight director. Kira Sherman and Evelyn Pham are scenic painters. Alexa Wolfe is stage manager.

At twenty-two years of age and counting, Pick Of The Vine 2024 once again makes for a terrific showcase for talented short-form playwrights, skillful directors, and stellar casts given ample opportunities to display equal parts versatility and pizzazz on the Little Fish Theatre stage. Trimmed down from seven to six playlets, it would be just about perfect.

Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St. San Pedro.
www.littlefishtheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
January 28, 2024
Photos: Miguel Elliot

Tags: Little Fish Theatre