Brett French and Hillary Ferguson in Tim O’Donnell’s Dating Outside Your Light Cone. Photo: Amber Ball
As every good storyteller knows, it’s possible to pack a whole lot of story into 10 short minutes.
Now multiply that story times eight and you get the basic framework for Northwest Ten: Seven Year Itch, the seventh annual festival of new 10-minute plays that wraps up with a final performance Saturday at Oregon Contemporary Theatre.
That’s almost like too much of a good thing —imagine an eight-course dinner, served over a period of less than two hours, without a whole lot of time between the roast beef and the grilled salmon to cleanse your palate. Almost, that is.
In fact this is a delightful evening of sharp entertainment, from John Yunker’s witty take on contemporary authorship, The Sales Rank Also Rises, which opens the evening, to Tim O’Donnell’s delightful Dating Outside Your Light Cone, which posits the romantic challenges involved in time travel.
A clear audience favorite was Suzanne Bailie’s just plain freaking weirdly hilarious Fish Queen, which is nearly impossible to describe so you’re just going to have to go see it, especially if you hate Starbucks.
The playwrights run the whole gamut in age, from high schooler Isabelle Rogers, whose noirish The Jade Pagoda is actually set at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, to the more accomplished, such as retired judge Greg Foote, whose Taking the Drop may plumb the deepest emotional waters here.
Barbara Pope’s ID Number 22374 is a taut naturalistic drama about postwar secret police, trust and fear, and Dale Light’s haunting (and uncapitalized) disappearer deals with a married couple in considerable crisis. Finally, Christopher McVey’s On-Again, Off-Again turns the tables on recovery and addiction programs.
The cast for this undertaking is enormous, as becomes clear when they all come out in the final curtain call. Add in eight playwrights and eight directors and you get an idea of the amount of work involved.
It’s an excellent evening out for anyone with an interest in stage, from first-timers to theater addicts. And best of all — if you don’t like the play you’re watching, you know it will be over soon and you’ll have a chance to try out a new one.
Northwest Ten: Seven-Year Itch
Seventh annual festival of new 10-minute plays
Oregon Community Theatre
Final performance 7:30 p.m. Saturday March 28