If you’re up for a night of quick-witted comedic microdosing, head over to the Red Barn Theatre, 319 Duval St., for a rollicking production of Short Attention Span Theatre’s “Parallel Universes.” The show features six 10-minute, one-act plays with a talented cast and crew that’s on stage through April 29.
“It’s all a wild and crazy collaboration,” laughed the venue’s executive producer, Mimi McDonald, on opening night April 7. The packed house confirmed, it seems, that Key West audiences may or may not have the mental fortitude to sit through and absorb two-hour performances elsewhere.
Regardless, the zany bits will make you laugh, as well as think, said McDonald.
So, what exactly are we learning?
“Well, the performers are asking questions about life, what could happen or what could be,” explained the producer. “The humor is just part of it; we want to make people think about what truly matters in their daily lives. The directors and writers in this show plugged their own points of view and (literary) subtext into what it means to be human today. The cool costumes and the great music help to bring it all together.”
This existential journey begins with the opening act: A woman in a supermarket (played by Susannah Wells) gazes at a frozen meal package wondering why a five-for-one sale is happening at the moment. Her friend (Erin McKenna) tries to shake the shopper out of her trance-like bewilderment. Later we see a census-taker (Cassidy Mills) attempting to deconstruct the gender kaleidoscope that is the present-day LGBTQ community. Actors Arthur Crocker, Jack McDonald and Jeremy Zoma join the fun by further confusing the government worker, all of the tomfoolery eliciting paroxysms of laughter from the audience.
Other comedic vignettes include a father lying on his hospital deathbed while his grown kids bicker about who will hang around while he lingers. Serious stuff, yes, but McDonald’s crew, which includes actor Iain Wilcox, manage to find the humor in such a scenario: ”Daddy, if you need to drift off to that bright light, now may be the time,” says one of the sons who is presumably too busy in his own life to hang around the edgy scene. “We love you, we’ll miss you!”
Chirps the daughter, “Why are you trying to push daddy off the ledge?”
Much of the production of “Parallel Universes” is a family affair: thespians Amber McDonald Good and her brother Jack have been in show business for years and are also Red Barn producer Mimi’s kids along with her husband Gary, the McDonald patriarch.
Writers for the material in these quickie “dramedy” pieces of “Parallel Universes” include: Ian August, Connie Bennett, Jacqueline Bircher, Jacob T. Zach, Laurie Allen and David Ives.
So if you’re feeling a bit of attention deficit syndrome coming on, head over to Red Barn Theatre in April to catch the train of the hilariously entertaining 10-minute bursts of thought pieces about life and death and our place in the universe — if there is one — mixed in with lots of laughs. The show is a light-hearted journey through metaphysical space and time and penned by playwrights who have clearly been conjuring serious and not-so-serious thoughts to these ideas.
