Harold Pinter's "Ashes to Ashes" takes a longer time – perhaps a little too long – but also is composed of language – and pauses – immediately recognizable as Pinter's, as is the air of mystery hovering over the man and woman in the piece – lovers? husband and wife? And how serious is the suggestion of violence at the end? It's Pinter, also done with fine attention to the playwright's ways by Nancy Lubowitz and Sean Ruprecht-Belt.
Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" has appeared in one-act play anthologies since it appeared in 1916, and it still makes its points about the shrewdness of women and the obtuseness of men. Anthony Wininger plays the county attorney investigating an apparent case of murder, Ruprecht-Belt is the sheriff, Chuck Lavazzi accompanies them, and Lubowitz and Rasch play the wives of two of the men.
Wininger winds up on the other side of the law as a man accused of rape in William Saroyan's "Hello Out There," another frequently anthologized play but one that, to me, hasn't held up too well. Though written in 1941, it now, in its sympathy for the rootless underdog, seems like a pale anticipation of Tennesse Williams' Orpheus Descending. Schrader plays the young woman who works in the jail and is the object of either the prisoner's sincere interest or his manipulative self-interest. Lavazzi returns as the outraged husband, Rasch as the wife who claims to have been raped, and Belt as part of a lynch mob.
All do well under the joint direction of Renee Sevier-Monsey and Carrie Phinney. Sevier-Monsey's scenic design places the kitchen for "Trifles" on the stage, with the other three plays performed in the space before the stage in sufficiently suggestive settings. Anthony Anselmo's lighting sometimes left the actors only partially illuminated. Russ Bettlach designed the costumes with his usual thoroughness, and Leonard Marshall designed the sound.
The four one-acts of A Woman's Place continue at the West End Players Guild through Sunday afternoon, November 14, 2010, in the basement theatre at the Union Avenue Christian Church. You may reserve tickets at www.westendplayers.org and at 314-367-0025.
