Following up on the recent Broadway revival of his Tony and Pulitzer-winning play “Doubt” and his new Off-Broadway hit “Brooklyn Laundry,” John Patrick Shanley has written another new play this year, “Banshee,” that’s getting considerably less attention. This is not surprising, since it’s running Off-Off Broadway…. for only four performances (the last one on Saturday)… on a program with four other plays…which is one of fourteen such programs (a total of some fifty new plays), as part of the annual Chain Summer One Act Festival.
It’s hard to argue “Banshee” deserves as much attention as “Doubt” or “Brooklyn Laundry.” It’s a 15-minute play that comes right up to the border between charming and twee. But I enjoyed it. And the entire program felt instructive, offering various lessons in the art of the 15-minute play.

In Irish folklore, a banshee is a female fairy who warns somebody they are about to die by distinctive weeping and wailing. The banshee in “Banshee” is named Genevieve (Elizabeth Bays), and she has climbed through the window of a house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina owned by a teacher named Malcolm (Erick Betancourt), who thinks he just has the flu. But this banshee has more in mind than just her traditional function. “Malcolm,” she says, “I want you to give me a baby.” As it turns out, the spirit doesn’t actually know how babies are made; she has literally lived most of her life under a rock.

For his part, Malcolm initially thinks his fever is making him hallucinate.

 Shanley adds his own twist to the folklore – giving a banshee’s kiss the power to cure a fatal illness – which transforms a tale of death into one of love.  Aided by the two comic performances under director David Zayas Jr.,  “Banshee” is funny and cute. It is long enough to tell a complete and well-paced story, short enough to avoid putting too much weight on something so inherently slight.

 In “Catch,” writer and performer Jeryl Brunner puts a fresh twist on a traditional American tale – that of the first date.  Brunner portrays a middle-aged woman named Justine, whom we first see weeks after her first and only date with Craig (Jason Kravits) whom she keeps on running into in the street; each time he says he’ll call her, but he never does. She worries that this is because of the cheap jeans she happened to be wearing during one such encounter, or the too-tight red dress during another.

 The play  flashes back to the date, at a fancy restaurant, where we learn of Craig’s all-consuming passion for fly fishing (“Would rather fly fish than breathe”), with Justine desperately trying to remember something she read about anglers to contribute to the conversation. (In the weeks afterwards, she bones up on fly fishing vocabulary.) Justine tells us that it was “a great, fun first date” and that  Craig is a likeable guy who treats everyone special. But that’s not what we see; Craig seems at best oblivious – and, subtly, something of a jerk. (It makes sense that Jesse Eisenberg, who as a performer and a playwright has specialized in similar characters, is one of the three producers of this production.)

Another flashback suggests what’s behind Justine’s hopeful misread of the situation: We see her as a shy, bright child who is thrilled that a new boy named Monty says hello to her, but a speech impediment keeps her from saying her name clearly, which annoys Monty and makes him walk away.

The ironically (and cleverly) named “Catch” expertly navigates between the comic and the poignant, aided by Sara Thigpen’s direction, and by the performances. During their first post-date encounter, Brunner as Justine the unreliable narrator tells us “he seemed friendly when he stopped. Well, kinda friendly…. more like high- school-reunion-friendly “ – and Kravits’ change in posture and facial expression to reflect these three gradations of friendliness is spot on hilarious, one of the most memorable examples of acting I’ve witnessed all year.

Mercifully, Justine wakes up, stops watching the videos she’s been watching about fly fishing, and starts thinking instead about pinball machines – and how she wants to stop being the pinball, and become the flipper.But, unlike “Banshee,” the pacing is off. Her change of heart feels unearned, abrupt – as if the creative team realized they had to wrap things up quickly in order to keep to the festival length. “Catch” needs to be more fully developed, to allow for Justine to change more credibly. That may mean that it would work better as a longer play.  

“Layover at Reagan National” also ends in an abrupt twist that feels unearned.  Kate Katcher, its writer and director, co-stars as Sarah, who is accompanying Daniel (Don Striano) to a playwriting conference.  As they chat with one another while waiting at the airport for a delayed flight, we learn that Daniel’s eyesight has suddenly deteriorated, that both are writers, that they  both find airport food overpriced. Then tragedy strikes – which we only learn about from a news report in voiceover. The point of the play seems to be how random and abrupt a public tragedy can be, and how indifferent we’ve become to them, but the play itself feels random and abrupt, and it doesn’t  overcome our indifference. A more effective play might be one that begins after “Layover at Reagan National” ends. 

In “Soured Milk,” writer and director Annie Raczko, whose day job is teaching theater in high school, portrays one of the four employees of Oak Harbor High School who hang out in the faculty lounge. We soon learn that Jake (Josh Bartosch) , a teacher turned administrator, has to lay off somebody; that Sam (Crystal Williamson), the school’s longtime librarian and Jake’s former mentor, is sliding toward dementia; that Cindy (Olivia Whicheloe ) wants to introduce New Age practices to her students and her colleagues; and that there is carton of milk in the refrigerator that’s probably soured but that nobody throws out – a glib metaphor that even the characters acknowledge.

As the play unfolds, from November to June, those four situations remain static until the fifth and final scene. If it’s hard to understand why nobody throws out the milk in all that time, and the hippy-dippy depiction of Cindy goes too far, “Soured Milk” otherwise presents a largely plausible world,  emphasizing character and atmosphere over plot.  Yet “Soured Milk” seems crying out to be a longer play. There is too much here – too many scenes, too many things to focus on – to fit comfortably in the mini-play format. 

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“Hangmen” has no such problem. Written by Kyle C. Mumford and directed by Matt Giroveanu, it’s a basic comic sketch, with Bruce (Mark Gorham) climbing a tree in the woods and putting a rope around his neck so that he can hang himself in peace – only to discover that, in the tree next door, Omar (David Harrison Pralgo) is doing exactly the same thing. We don’t learn anything about either of them,  and the sketch ends as sketches do, with a surprise that acts like a punchline.  But if it has little of the wit of “Banshee,” the poignance of “Catch” or the character specificity of “Soured Milk,” the actors are appealing, the resolution is life-affirming, and it felt a fit finale for a festival program of shorts.

Photos by David Zayas Jr.