Theater Review / Short Attention Span Theater: The Red Barn winds up season with a potpourri of fun and hilarity

By Joanna Brady

You don’t have to have ADHD to enjoy the six short plays in the Red Barn’s final offering of their successful 2016-7 season. Short Attention Span Theater, which opens April 25, will be running for just three weeks, so be sure to reserve your tickets soon. It’s an entertaining way to wind up your winter theater-going.

The all-new version of this popular play fest featuring ‘just shorts’ offers six fresh plays—chosen from fifty—interpreted by seven talented actors, a mix of veterans and newcomers from this season’s offerings at all the Key West theatres.

What links the plays together is their common theme, brief encounters of several kinds.

Videos of other bizarre kinds, showing a couple of goofy Key West locals, appear between the live performance of each play, giving the production a diverting continuity.

While I enjoyed all the plays—each one has merit—the writing of some of them is brilliant. In particular “Flipper’s Comeback” by Rich Orloff, really cracked me up. The ever funny Marjorie Shook is terrific as a cash-poor agent representing Flipper the dolphin, played by the hilarious Gordon Mackey as the aquatic diva has-been. The interplay of her antics to cajole the reluctant cetacean to accept a new role, and his resistance to accepting, drew plenty of laughs from the audience.

Gordon Mackey earned even more appreciation in the very funny play by the late lamented Shel Silverstein called “Dirty Laundry,” in which he plays the owner of a laundry sparring with an indignant customer, nicely portrayed by Susannah Wells. His fallacious sophistry proves that even the most mundane setting can be marvelous in the hands of a clever, witty writer and good actors.

The veteran players did not disappoint, but neither did the younger, newer actors on the scene. In particular, Cody Borah is great as a comedy instructor in “Rules of Comedy” by Patricia Cotter. Aramis Ikatu—who plays a sullen vampire in the play “Bite Me” was also good—and Lisa Monda and Erin McKenna both turned in fine performances in a couple of plays each.

The whole cast turns up in the final play, “Serendipity” by Steven Christopher Yocky, which has a Twilight Zone feel to it. But even to this, the talented cast manages to add humor, ending this eclectic collection of plays on an entertaining note.

Contributing to the excellent direction are Richard Grusin, Amber McDonald Good, Jack McDonald and Gary McDonald (a family affair!). The videos were directed by Susannah Wells and star Marky Pierson and Morgan Fraga.

Well worth seeing! Curtains, 8:00 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.redbarntheatre.com/tickets or calling the box office at 305 296-9911. The Red Barn is located at 319 Duval St. (rear) in Key West.

(Joanna Brady is a Key West writer, author of a historical novel of Key West, The Woman at the Light, published by St. Martin’s Press)

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