2 One-Acts Split on the Ability to Entertain

Playwright Sam Ingraffia seems to enjoy the various and random ways people meet. And in his paired one-acts at Actors Alley’s Storefront Theatre--”Pearl Harbor Day in Muncie” and “Pasquini the Magnificent”--he tries to create diversity in his characters and their situations.

In other words, Ingraffia contrives the happenstance in life, which is up there with the really tough tricks for a playwright to pull off. It makes anything in the magician’s act of Ingraffia’s “Pasquini” pale by comparison.

The chance meeting in “Pearl Harbor” succeeds on almost every level--emotionally, thematically, culturally--and the play’s sudden shifts of tone feel like the stuff of meaningful surprise. It begins simply--too simply, really, like a sitcom--as Tom Lent’s chattering, drinking salesman John regales Dale Kleine’s quiet, older Michael at a bar in Muncie, Ind., on Pearl Harbor Day.

Director Joe Garcia keenly orchestrates the pair’s dry comic timing, but at first, this seems scenario looks like a pat “Cheers” wannabe.

Early on, actually, Ingraffia sows seeds of something more serious going on, as the bar’s TV reports on the latest news from the Vietnam War and the protests back home.

The light banter is actually a bit of sleight of hand to distract us from the play’s sudden payoff. By the time Michael begins talking, the Vietnam War has come back to slap us in the face. Kleine’s portrayal of Michael is the ultimate in the ethic of less-is-more, and so is the play.

Longer and far less resonant, “Pasquini” is where Ingraffia flubs everything he does right in “Pearl Harbor.” There is a credible set-up: Enzo Pasquini (Ken Magee) is in a make-shift green room preparing to perform his act at a meat wholesalers’ banquet and having to put up with the fussy Jack (John Hugo), who’s “producing” the evening. Then things turn to comic mush.

Marion (Mary Baldwin) bursts in on Pasquini while he is warming up. She has just slugged her husband and wants to find a place to be alone. Somehow, they put up with each other in the back room, while we wonder why Marion doesn’t just ask one of her female friends at the banquet for taxi fare home.

Logic vanishes, and it doesn’t feel like magic, just bad writing, which huffs and puffs toward an unearned happy ending. Director Garcia’s actors hold up nicely, with Magee suggesting the struggling magician’s inner life. And we can’t help but notice during the play’s many lulls that Hugo is a ringer for Al Gore.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Pearl Harbor in Muncie” and “Pasquini the Magnificent.”

* WHERE: Actors Alley’s Storefront Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays. Ends Jan. 30.

* HOW MUCH: Free, donations encouraged.

* CALL: (818) 508-4200.