Two Out of Three

Evenings dedicated to one-act plays are always a grab bag. It’s no different with “Death Defying Acts,” three short plays that are intended to be played together. They’re by David Mamet, Elaine May and Woody Allen, and they enjoyed a healthy success in New York.

A revival now playing at Orange Coast College’s Drama Lab in Costa Mesa illustrates the differing styles of the three writers, as well as the need for different acting and directing styles to make each work.

Director John Ferzacca has captured the tone and flavor of two of the plays. But Woody Allen’s “Central Park West” has eluded him and his actors. Allen has put together a delicious jigsaw of an evening in a chic Manhattan flat, where Phyllis (Lea Kassebaum) is getting drunk because her husband, Sam (Steve Bloch), is leaving her for another woman. Phyllis blames good friend Carol (Lynn Laguna), whose marriage to Howard (Henry Wyatt Moore) is also pretty shaky.

Tempers flare. Telling incidents in the quartet’s past are revealed. A gun is drawn. Allen builds it all into a tasty Big Apple pie, flavorful and juicy. Little of this is apparent in the performances. Kassebaum and Laguna spend most of the time shrieking at each other, missing most of the laughs that a more laid-back, sophisticated Allen approach would uncover. Moore and Bloch as the husbands are in even more trouble, with line readings that often make little sense. The only performance that works is Paulina Brown’s Juliet, a mystery woman who appears late and solves all the problems.

The May piece, called “Hotline,” is an odd, linear tale about nervous suicide hotline employee Ken (Michael Cavinder), who begins to build his confidence until a call from a desperate, neurotic hooker named Dorothy (Jennifer Avina) proves too challenging. Outside of a dated ploy in which Ken tries to get Dorothy’s address from the local police precinct by telling them that bombs have been planted in the station house (today half the force would be at his door instantly), it’s standard storytelling and requires a fairly straightforward presentation. It gets that in excellent performances from the whole cast.

The prize, however, is the evening opener, David Mamet’s “An Interview,” which follows Mamet’s fascination with people at the gates of hell. In this case, which is one of the decade’s funniest lawyer jokes, an attorney is being interviewed by an attendant in order to set his conditions in hell. Though Ferzacca might have sparked the tempos a bit more, he captures the Mamet feel, as does Donald Lee Kindle as the lawyer, in a performance rich in the restrained angst and frantic urgency of Mamet’s writing, and with a fine understanding of Mamet’s sense of humor. Angel Correa is also strong as the cool, uncomprehending attendant trying to fathom the attorney’s reasoning.

BE THERE

“Death Defying Acts,” Drama Lab, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. $6-$9. (714) 432-5880. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.