For this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, the customary dramatic anthology that showcases ATL's Apprentice Company has been created jointly by four playwrights under the title "Fast and Loose: An Ethical Collaboration." Jose Cruz Gonzalez, Kirsten Greenidge (whose satirical full-length play, Sans-culottes in the Promised Land, is a highlight of the festival), Julie Marie Myatt, and John Walch started with these four questions involving ethics, according to program notes: "If you found out a terrible secret that might hurt the ones you love, would you expose it? Would you choose what served the greatest good for the most people, even if it violated the rights of an individual? Is it ever okay to apply your own ethical standards to another culture, group, or home? And in the end, why should any of us care one bit about what might benefit other people?"
The four short works that resulted (ATL says each playwright started one of the story lines - one for each dilemma - and others continued the narrative) are rather commonplace and hardly profound. No great universal answers come to light as the separately-written tales interweave and recede. But some of the dialogue lets the spotlight shine intermittently on certain young actors who rise to the occasion. Other apprentices might have produced stronger impressions had their material been better.
In "Wake God's Man" Natalie Arnold (as Sarah) stands out as one of three sisters agonizing - or not - about participating in a memorial service for a priest who abused them as children. When a mummified form shaped like a human body that hangs above the stage like a pinata starts spilling pecans, some deep meaning that eluded me seems to be suggested.
"Union" is about labor strife at a clothing factory. Emily Ruddock (as union member Margaret) and Adam Suritz (as Harry, the factory owner's son) excel in a sharply written exchange that brings their characters to life. Pirronne Yousefzadeh (as Danielle, roped into accompanying a friend on a blind date while suffering through a cold) is vivid and highly amusing in "The Mating Habits of the Sage Grouse," an otherwise pedestrian take on the way today's young people seek love and sex.
Lisa Benner (as Kathy, meeting the surrogate mother who will give birth to the child she and her husband plan to adopt) is a compelling and quietly effective performer and the great strength of "In This House."
