"On days like this, pain is my guiding light!"
For their second outing in Singularity's yearly festival at Manhattan Theatre Source, young theatre group Magnetic North offered up four playlets loosely tied together under the moniker "Survival of the Fittest." Though of varying writing quality, the brightly played one-acts hold many wonderful moments and a bevy of talented performers.
In the first, Elizabeth Emmons' "At the Seashore," a group of sex-obsessed teens find a strange creature by the water line, and argue over what to do with it. The weakest of the four, with broad direction by Karin Bowersock and overly anxious performances by Clayton Dean Smith, Marcus Bonnee and Leslie Eva Glaser, this slight piece meanders and never finds a clear purpose.
Greg Gasawski's "The Kingdom" is a "Twilight Zone"-y story of a psychiatrist (Mark Thornton) and a patient (Claire Alpern) who seems to think she is an agent from beyond the grave come back to save him. Though Max Williams' direction is a bit stiff, the two actors create some strong moments as the story develops in fairly predictable fashion.
Things pick up in Baxter Holland's hilarious "The Long Arm of Science." Hettienne Park and Elaine O'Brien sparkle as a pair of marketers testing out a new, odd product on three college kids (John Miller, Andrew Breving, Scott Wilson) for a tough client (David Marcus). Park, in particular, as the pain-loving team leader drives this somewhat silly but charming piece, directed sprightly by Greg Schmalbach.
The evening's highlight is Josh Ben Friedman's "Animal Play." Directed by Rachel Wood, this efficient one act offers up Friedman's (last fall's "Blood in the Sink" at Urban Stages) telltale black humor and knack for smart theatricality in the story of a savage hunter (Andrew McGinn, who is terrific) who gets his comeuppance when the animals he's killed (Dennis McNitt, Aaron Simms) start haunting his somewhat mousy wife (Sarah Sutel) and then come looking for him.