Ethan Phillips' "Penguin Blues," directed by Brad Schroeder and featuring Pat Collins and Carolyn Wood as a California voiceover artist and a Wisconsin nun thrown together in an alcoholic rehab clinic's therapy group, and David Mamet's "Duck Variations," in which park bench philosophizers Schroeder and Collins are directed by Wood, are two tightly constructed plays well suited to D.B. Cooper's tiny Backroom cabaret.
- PENGUIN BLUES finds Sister Angelita ("Don't call me that!") and Gordon, an angry drunk, confronting their problems in a brief one-on-one therapy session at a rehabilitation clinic.Gordon openly admits his fondness for booze - bourbon, vermouth and everything else he can get his hands on. But the slightly wayward nun insists she's only there because "I might have a problem." Rooted firmly in denial, she's convinced that her six-pack-a-day consumption (not easy in the cloistered environs of a convent) is not a serious problem.
Phillips, who has had works produced previously at Salt Lake Acting Company and at the Sundance Playwrights' Lab, fills his dark little comedy with witty, insightful dialogue.
It's an interesting look at two frightened misfits.
Sister Angelita, despite her penchant for drink, is fairly naive and sheltered. When she notes that one of the men in their therapy group has admitted that he's a closet cross-dresser, she asks, "Does that mean he wears a crucifix?"
"How can I be a `social drinker' when I don't even have a social life?" she contends.
Gordon, on the other hand, is climbing the walls. He's sweet and understanding one moment, then flying into a rage the next - driven to drink at an early age by Sister St. John at the School of the Immaculate Conception. He's still smarting from the time she slapped him in front of the other pupils.
- DUCK VARIATIONS is another two-character piece, but it's an 180-degree turn from "Penguin Blues."
In this humorous Mamet piece, there are 16 brief scenes, all involving two guys sitting on a park bench overlooking a duck-filled pond in an undisclosed park.
It could be anywhere from Central Park to Liberty Park.
The location is unimportant.
What's fascinating is the many directions the two unnamed guys take in their afternoon conversations.
They cover all kinds of topics - envirionment, propagation, the weather, agriculture, hunting - but invariably they either start or come back to the subject of ducks.
But little in their freewheeling debates can be taken seriously.
Like "Because of the heavy airplane traffic, there are ducks that have been found to have lung cancer - just from breathing all that gunky mess up there in the stratosphere!"
Or a debate on the ageless duck vs. blue heron battle: "It's a struggle as old as time. The ducks propagate and the blue herons exist only to gobble them up. It's a case of heredity vs. environment."
- Sensitivity rating: "Penguin Blues" has some profanity and adult situations. "Duck Variations" has mild swearing.