The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights had an interesting idea for their Hollywood Fringe Festival outing. Six plays centering on a prop—a brightly colored glow-in-the-dark Kinky Neon Rocker. I was told they had over 300 submissions of ten-minute plays and ended up choosing the varied sextet they produced. The program began with the funniest entry, Dan Berkowitz’s Lesbian Vixens of the SS in Hitler’s Off His Rocker. The title alone evokes gales of laughter from those z-movie aficionados who think Ilsa She Wolf of the SS is a lost treasure. Royana Black and Melissa Brandzel go all out to deliver the goods while Berkowitz slyly turns the piece into a 99-seat Plan plea for tolerance. Elin Hampton’s F4 turns serious as a newbie EMT tries to help a suicidal man who survived a F4 tornado in his rocking chair. Rom Watson’s Mr. Cuddles is a cringe-inducing piece where an avaricious couple discovers their wealthy but sight poor Grandma has mistakenly adopted a giant rat as her pet cat. The ROUS can even do a hula.
Michael Van Duzer’s Gardening For Beginners is the group’s most serious piece. The time-shifting work looks at a gay couple near the beginning of their relationship, as they consider buying a house together, and at their breakup years later. Judith Allen’s It’s Your Funeral hits its senior citizen aimed laughs thanks to the Linda Lavin-ish line delivery of Annie Abbott. She is a woman of a certain age who has planned everything for her demise and tries to convince her responsible daughter to follow through with them. Ron Burch’s Objectum Sexuality ends the evening on a kinky comic note as a man attends his first couples counseling session with his latest paramour, a rocking chair who just isn’t into him any longer. David Fury directed all six one-acters and the on-stage three-member Oolyakoo rock band plays intermittently during the show.
