‘Pendulum Swings’ through five plays Writer’s short pieces create vibrant theater

BELAST – Watching a play at the Performance Project is like eavesdropping or spying on a neighbor. The 55-seat theater above the Belfast Post Office is the perfect setting for five of Robert Manns’ short plays presented under the title “The Pendulum Swings.”

The pieces run the gamut from romantic comedy to absurdist theater to political commentary. The acting and directing give the material a bit more heft than some of it deserves, but taken altogether, the short pieces make for a night of vibrant theater written by a recent transplant to Camden.

Manns was born in Detroit, but spent six years in New York, where his plays were first produced. He taught dramaturgy at Emory University in Atlanta and served as director of the Callanwolde Art Institute there. A poet and nature lover who has served as a field representative for the National Audubon Society, his love and advocacy of wildlife and the environment have manifested themselves in much of his writing.

His best known full-length work is “Lincoln, Parts I and II,” two verse plays that begin with the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln and end with his assassination. Written more than 30 years ago, they were never produced in full-scale productions, but in the mid-1990s, Manns combined them into a piece that was performed as reader’s theater in Atlanta.

Honest Abe, however, does not make an appearance in Manns’ work at the Performance Project. The only history these five plays draw on is, perhaps, the playwright’s own.

“Camden Can Can” is the most traditional of the quintet. The play tells the story of Harold and Carlene’s summer courtship and it sparkles due to the fine acting of Tim Collins and Kristen Costanza. The heat between the two crackles through the tiny theater as they waltz to the mating ritual repeated thousands of times on thousands of porches on centuries of sultry summer evenings.

David Patrick Stucky joins Collins as his sergeant for “The Drill,” the second and weakest play of the five. It offers little insight into the military and relies on outdated stereotypes. Both actors are wasted in the piece, with Collins doing a bad Gomer Pyle imitation.

“The Point” offers insight on a subject that playwrights rarely tackle – old age. Jennifer DeJoy is mesmerizing as Mercy, a woman who seeks out the acupuncturist Jolinda, played by Costanza. DeJoy realistically captures the voice and body of the old woman without turning her into a caricature and instills her with a dignity society rarely affords the aged. DeJoy is perfect in the role of Jolinda and masters an actor’s toughest job — listening.

Collins and DeJoy team up for “The Neophytes,” an absurdist look at a theater where there is an audience but no actors. It is an insider joke best understood and appreciated by former actors, but clever in its execution and expertly performed.

The closing piece, from which the compilation takes its name, appears to be a meandering anti-war think piece, whose meaning is perhaps lost on those who did not live through World War II. Performed just as the bombing of Baghdad began, it seemed too soon to compare the war in Iraq with other conflicts.

Director Larraine Brown has a knack for mining the best from even slim material and letting her actors run with it. She understands that intimacy makes for compelling and transforming theater and Brown is especially adept at turning an audience into one collective spying on the performers as if they were neighbors.

Robert Manns will sign copies of his Lincoln plays at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Owl and Turtle bookstore in Camden. “The Pendulum Swings” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Camden and at 8 p.m. Friday, April 4 at the Unity Center for the Arts in Unity. For more information, call the Performance Project at 338-2734.