		Short and Sweet
		SAN FRANCISCO FRINGE FESTIVAL AUDIENCE REVIEWS
		HOME / FRINGE PLAYS / TO REVIEW A PLAY / RECENT REVIEWS
CLICK HERE FOR RECENT REVIEWS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER CLICK ON PLAY FOR AUDIENCE REVIEWS FOR THAT PLAY Abducted Action! Asian for Dummies Ball and Daisy Chain Can You See Me? Certain Things... Chinese Clown Cabaret Cincinatti Come Fly With Me Nude Comedy on the Square divagation Faker Flame and the Stone Flower Murderer Framework Future Folkloric Hollywoodland Home/Darkness Hooray for Speech... It's Stupid to Steal... Late Night With God Long-Form Improv &... m.i. blue's TWILITE... Magic @ the Fringe Moliere Than Thou nEO-sURREALISTS Present Other American Stories Oui Be Negroes PAIN Quarter Into It Rabbit Causes Dog Rap Canterbury Tales Reframing the Hourglass Short and Sweet... some life Subhuman-True Tales... This Love Train... Thrilling Adventures... Tonight: The Harsh … Under the Counter... Viva Karaoke!... Viva Vivi Wrestling an Alligator Young War Zeppelin Beach Improv		Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Leon Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars Great scripts and strong acting. I especially enjoyed Karen Macklin's play and thought Jennifer Dean and David Stein gave lovely, nuanced performances. Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Barbara Reviewer Email: barbsharon@aol.com Rating: 5 Stars Short and Sweet -- three emotionally packed, moving plays about women facing crises in their lives. The acting is uniformly professional, with great depth and intensity, credited, in great part to the innovative and effective direction by Karen Macklin. My favorite of the three was "Commit Me To Memory," a beautifully lyrical piece about a young woman coming to terms with life and death, and, in the process, trying to help her lover to come to terms with life and death as well. The interaction between the two players alternated between tension and softness, anger and love. The emotions were genuine and the outcome of the play poignant. The other two pieces were also well done and all three made for a balanced production. A must see Play: "Short and Sweet" Reviewer: Judy Reviewer Email: Rating: 3 Stars "Hit the Muscle" --about two suburban Narcissists in an empty marriage. Somehow they made a committment to spend their lives together without him knowing anything about the reality of her past--yet somehow he loved her neurotic, controlled and controlling present self??? Oh no I forgot, he only loved his fantasy image of her--he knew nothing about the guts and blood and bones and soul of this woman. I didn't believe it...or maybe it was more that I didn't care. I didn't like them--especially the main character. She was too defended. I needed her to be willing to risk the safety and security of her sterile, thinly constructed fantasy life to realize her authentic self and to live her truth soulfully and with courage. Maybe the play was too short for this kind of development. Maybe, to be fair, I don't like short pieces. I don't want to see "ordinary" behavior on stage (hiding, pretending), I want to see ordinary people in the extraordinary part of their journeys... The middle piece--"Ritual Trio" was interesting--loved the exploration of the sexual attractiveness of an older woman. Hated that the lust remained cerebral and was not consumated. The last piece "Commit me to memory" ...as a woman living with a life-threatening illness, the heroic martyrdom of the main (and dying) character pissed me off. "Yes I know you love me and I love you but I am going to save you from the horror of watching me die by running off to India to die alone." Give me a f%$#ing break! If you have someone willing to go through it with you, then have the courage to go through it with them. The common thread in these three pieces? a woman presented with an opportunity to have an authenitc connection with another through the courageous act of accepting the truth of who she herself is, and each of them choosing instead, to hide, to withdraw, to resist. Please show me a woman who loves herself enough to allow herself to be accepted, loved, desired and supported for her true self, even (and especially) if part of the truth is that she is an ex-junkie, a woman of age whose life is etched into her face, or a woman who is dying. Give me hope, not just something to think about. Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Amanda Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars As an person with a short attention span and also lacking play-going experience, I found Short and Sweet conceptually appealing. Hit the Muscle (first play) provides a diverse set of characters--the actors play off one another well. Commit Me to Memory (third) works well as a short play, though it made me want to see the longer version, and achieves impressive character depth and thematic gravity, especially given the short time frame. Congrats to the cast, crew and director for their talents and effort. Play: short and sweet: three plays Reviewer: annika Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars The first of the three plays (Hit the Muscle) was brilliant. It is complete in-and-of-itself, ending with a moment of epiphany for the protagonist, a young woman who has pulled herself out of reform school by years of excruciating self-discipline. At the same time, I wanted to see this one-act embedded in a full play, and to spend more time with the wonderfully realized character. This play makes the whole show worth-while.The other two plays don't work as well. The second one was tedious interlude about an older woman in a bar, who is not dealing well with aging. Fortunately it was very short. The last play, about a woman with a neurological problem (tumor? brain damage?) charactized by loss of memory and focus, who has fled to an ashram in India. There she is visited by a friend/co-worker from back in the states. It was interesting; the only problem I had with it was that the staging was very static Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Amy Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars A good trio of vignettes with strong female characters - the acting is solid throughout, and Karen Macklin's direction gives a unified feeling to the evening's presentation. The most interesting aspect of Short and Sweet is glimpses we are given into the female protagonists interior turmoil and/or states of mind- a young professional struggling to come to terms with a hidden history of rebellious and wayward behaviour; an "older" woman eschewing the standard cliches and laws of sexual attraction; a dying woman living out the last of her days on an ashram in India. Be prepared for the varying length of the pieces though - Hit the Muscle, the first one, is the longest and most developed in terms of scenes, while Ritual Trio is a short, moody and surreal piece, the last one, Commit Me to Memory, is a medium-length(?) one act. Play: Short & Sweet Reviewer: Mark Staatsucht Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars A trio of plays with uniformly good acting. All three works deal with women who might be considered "difficult," and what I liked is that the actresses and playwrights don't make an overt play for our sympathies -- we're asked to take these women on their own terms. (Imagine how condescendingly or shrilly these women would be portrayed in the average movie or TV show -- but what am I saying, women like these would never even turn up in a Hollywood flick or network drama.) Play: Short & Sweet Reviewer: Alex Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars I enjoyed this show. At first I thought the first one was going to be too long for the rest of the plays to be completed (It was very engaging - there were just lots of mini scenes), but rest assured -there is time for it all. I actually would be interested to see the first piece taken into a longer play. It is rich material. I especially liked the friend character in the first piece - great acting! The second piece, Ritual Trio was intriguing, interesting and very satisfying. So rare that we get a view of a sexually empowered woman past a certain age. Cool music, great silent action and interesting writing & direction. Though I liked Commit Me To Memory... It felt like a potent piece and had some nice acting - I would have liked it to be more condensed so that it would impact me more deeply. All that said -the evening was well worth the time and I would recommend a viewing. I'll be going back to see how it evolves... Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Sarah Reviewer Email: Rating: 3 Stars I'm giving the play three stars for effort and because it was a slick overall production with a nice set. Why the audience was laughing I have no idea. Especially the last play which I thought would never end. Dull, dull, and dull!!!! Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Michael Reviewer Email: Rating: 2 Stars All in all, 'Short and Sweet' disappoints. My first issue was with the length: While advertised to be one hour, it ran 10 minutes over and thus kept me from seeing my next play, defeating the whole point of the Fringe Festival. Secondly, it's hard to find a common thread through the three plays that warrants them being grouped together. Thirdly, the writing of the last play was painfully trite. After a tight first short play, I was intrigued (though clueless) through the second "poetic" piece. I wouldn't call it a play, maybe an 'interlude.' But it did seem to build up to the third play as if the last was most important, only to leave me wincing and yawning through cliché after Californian New Age cliché. To be fair, I want to give credit to the actors who all brought strong performances to the production. The leading ladies of all three plays especially deserve praise. Now let's find them some better scripts to perform! Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Dolly Reviewer Email: Rating: 4 Stars I really wanted to like these plays, but I wasn't interested in the subject matter: The first play: middle class people and their angst regarding expensive fertility treatments; the third play: being able to jet off to India and discover yourself while in the process of dying;Dialogue not engaging. However, I found the middle one especially interesting. I liked the poetic style of it, interesting actors to watch, etc. Worth seeing. Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Jack Reviewer Email: Rating: 5 Stars This show rocks! The writing is tight and sharp, the mood and music are evocative, the acting was great all around. One of the things I really liked was how in the first play, "Hit the Muscle," the writer, director, and actors really managed to compress an entire story, complete with scene changes, into such a small span. It was very well done and really gave the audience a sense of the pressure the main character was under, an actress who did a very good job portraying that, by the way (I don't know her name... sorry). I especially like how the two more "typically" dramatic pieces (that and "Commit Me to Memory") bookended what is a more abstract, movement-oriented, moody piece in the middle. This structure seems to reflect what the 3 plays themselves are all really about -- the everyday facade we keep on the outsides of ourselves to show to the world vs. the more moody, dark, frightening, and fascinating places that we hide away inside us. A great directorial choice! I also ! saw "Commit Me to Memory" at the BOA festival with a different director and one different actor and thought that while both versions had their strong points, there was much more tension in the connection between the two characters in this version. I think that made the play more dynamic and also more real than it was in BOA and I like what the director did with it. On the whole, the only truly negative thing I can say about the show is that it was like 200 degrees in the theatre -- I knew bikram yoga was big, but bikram theatre? Oh, well, it's the fringe. What can you do? And this show is definitely better than most of what you see in the fringe. Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Keith Reviewer Email: Rating: 5 Stars I thought this production was fantastic. First of all, I saw Karen Macklin's Commit Me To Memory at BOA and thought this self-directed production was way stronger. I never saw direction change a piece so much - it was fascinating. I really felt the emotions of the situation much more intensely here. Jennifer Dean and David Stein both gave great performances. Jen Kollmer's play Hit the Muscle also had really strong writing - she has a real knack for the way people spaek. And Ritual Trio was really interesting. A lot different than the work I usually see, and I thought the directorial and choreography choices were clever. It toed the line between literal and figurative, always keeping the viewer on his toes. Lots of surprises. I saw this show twice, and you should, too!! Play: Short & Sweet Reviewer: Karen Reviewer Email: Rating: 5 Stars These three short plays are GREAT! The acting is solid, the writing is interesting, the direction is intelligent. The middle play, 'Ritual Trio' is a perfect plum! These are not to be missed. Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Eliah Mountjoy Reviewer Email: elion@rock.com Rating: 4 Stars Wonderful, diverse, moist, poigniant...Loved this! Play: Short & Sweet Reviewer: Karen Reviewer Email: Rating: 5 Stars wow, these gals have it together! All three plays are textually very interesting, and the acting is awesome! The middle piece, Ritual Trio, is a perfect plum of a moment, an amazing little 'what if' moment. Not to be missed! Play: Short & Sweet Reviewer: Fred Reviewer Email: Rating: 2 Stars Stay home and watch Lifetime! Outside of Jennifer Dean's outstanding work in "Commit Me To Memory", this is a fairly pretentious evening of theatre. I saw "Commit Me" in the BOA festival and it was much better at that time. This production replaced the lead actor from BOA with another actor who was not nearly as good. While essentially the same presentation as in BOA, there were a few different choices made that really changed the play for me. In this version, Adam persistently yells at his dying ex-lover, which eliminated any sympathy I could have for the character. Not sure if that was a rewrite or a director or an actor choice, but the whole tone of the play shifted. In BOA, the actor playing Adam, never raised his voice. The play went from a nice character piece driven by the circumstances of their history together and the awkwardness of the situation, and it now comes off as someone so bitter and angry that he would travel to India to yell at a dying woman in order to fee! l better about himself. Total character shift. I really hated the changes. Ms. Dean completely carried the play. The middle piece of the evening is wholly unnecessary, especially as the evening runs over the allotted one hour time slot. If they had cut the 10 minute second piece, they would be at an hour length. I didn't understand why it was there, or what the urgency was to produce it. The 3 pieces don't seem to have any common ground, so it feels fairly disconnected. 2 short plays seperated by 10 minutes of beatnik poetry. There were sevral talented actors in the cast, but I have to say I was hoping for more. Play: Short and Sweet: 3 Plays Reviewer: Cynthia Reviewer Email: cynsa@ix.netcom.com Rating: 5 Stars Jennifer Dean's performance in "Commit Me to Memory" is mesmerizing with nuance - a gesture, a glance, a shift in thought. All 3 of the short plays are well-written, and performed with excellence. This should play to a full-house every performance, it's a "must-see". note: theater is stuffy and too-hot for comfort - crank up the fans, please! Play: Short and Sweet Reviewer: Greg B Reviewer Email: Rating: 5 Stars Based on the writers and performers involved, I whole-heartedly recommend this show. I saw one of these at the BOA Festival, and the other was workshopped locally, and I look forward to catching these plays again at the Fringe. All the talent is exceptional - hooray for Jen, Karen, Daniel, Nicole and the rest of the crew. :-)