Horton Foote knows the territory well. He's been writing about Harrison, Tex., the fictional stand-in for his Texas hometown of Wharton, for decades. And in "The Prisoner's Song," Foote is at his most evocative, providing a sterling centerpiece for the second series in Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon 2002, its annual festival of one-act plays.
With deft strokes, Foote paints a telling portrait of the town's layers of class and racism, the tensions between the poor and the nouveau-riche oil barons. It's compelling Americana circa the 1930s.
John, an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink or a job in months, and his wife, Mae, are living on their last dollars in a genteel rooming house. Opportunity seems to knock when a wealthy friend of Mae's family contacts the couple with the promise of aiding John's search for employment. Nothing cataclysmic occurs, but the play moves through a series of emotional highs and lows that make for absorbing theatre. Under Harris Yulin's sensitive direction, there are lovely performances by Mary Catherine Garrison and Tim Guinee as the couple, Michael P. Moran as the friend, and Marceline Hugot as a gossipy landlady.
The evening's three other plays are a mixed but hardly unpleasant bag. "Adaptation" by Roger Hedden is a sassy satire, even though the target is familiar: what passes for the creative process in network television. Of course, sex has a lot to do with it, as a soured romance between a writer and director throws a monkey wrench into the planning for a dramatic series. Brooke Smith and Dennis Boutsikaris play the estranged lovers with an effective edge, and make them believable as well. Ian Reed Kesler, Fiona Gallagher, and Spencer Garrett create an appropriately chilling gallery of network types, and Billy Hopkins' astute direction keeps the pace snappy.
"Am Lit or Hibernophilia" by Dan O'Brien has an engaging performance by Tom Bloom as a restless professor giving up America to live in Ireland; however, his plight fails to take on dramatic urgency. "Salvation" by Bill Bozzone concerns a perky babysitter evangelist and her overage (15-year-old) charge. There are funny bits, but the overall effect is that of a muddled cartoon.