Reviews

ADDISON – Dallas has an unusual, if rather fortunate, problem: We have more fine stage directors than we have work for them. Our theater festivals offer a welcome opportunity for us to see them do their stuff.

BEN FREDMAN/DMN

Lee Trull performs in Rum and Vodka, a one-man play written by young Irish master Conor McPherson, at WaterTower's Out of the Loop Festival. The play is directed by Joel Ferrell.

Joel Ferrell has had all too few local assignments since he left Casa Mañana some years ago. For this year's Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, he has done a bang-up job with Conor McPherson's Rum and Vodka.

Written when the Irish writer was only 22, this one-man play anticipates his later work; its sole character tells a long, long story that becomes increasingly fascinating and foreboding. As you might infer from the title, alcohol has a big part in the tale. Mr. McPherson has recently gone public about his own battles with the bottle, so he undoubtedly knows whereof he writes.

The project is a showcase for Lee Trull. This young actor has proven himself adept at both comedy and drama, but nothing he has done hereabouts has prepared us for the performance he gives here. His face iridescent with emotion, he veers from drunken exhilaration to remorseful despair. The play itself peters out in the end, but Mr. Trull never lets us down.

Robert Neblett has proved himself as one of the area's best hired-gun directors over the last few years, but to date his best work hasn't been for his own Inevitable Theatre Company. His contribution to the 2008 Loop festival, Surface TENsion: Ten-Minute (and Then Some...) Plays by Contemporary Playwrights, only partially remedied that situation.

Whether by accident or not, the three weakest stagings among the seven short shows were of the comedies. Perhaps it's partly a matter of the genre. It's hard for a short funny piece not to seem like a rejected script from Saturday Night Live. Paul Rudnick's Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach avoided that pitfall through literacy and sheer outrageousness.

As a living relic of the old days of gay stereotypes, Mr. Neblett himself makes a rare stage appearance. At Sunday's performance he seemed to be struggling with his lines, not to speak of his falsetto, but the segment in which the character gives a short history of gay theater was hilarious.

Dark and intense seem to bring out the best in this director. Predictably, the little plays about werewolves, remnants of a cruel dictatorship and rape were all terrific. The final piece, in which two people recite the highlights of their lives as they prepare to jump off one of the Twin Towers, made it hard to suppress tears.

•The Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison, through March 16. $10 to $15, festival pass $50. 972-450-6232, www.watertowertheatre.org.