Review: TEN MINUTE COMEDIES at Rover Dramawerks is Face-Paced, Laugh Out Loud Funny!

TEN MINUTE COMEDIES

By:   Nine Very Talented Authors
Directed By: Nine Very Creative Directors 
Produced By: Rover Dramawerks at the Cox Playhouse in Plano

Audience Rating: PG
Running Time: 2 hours with one 15-minute intermission
Accessible Seating: Available
Hearing Devices: Not Available
Sensory Friendly Showing: Not Available
ASL Showing: Not Available
Sound Level: Comfortable
Audio/Visuals To Prepare For: Some flashing lights. 

Reviewed by Dan C. Rogers

Ten Minute Comedies are fast-paced, funny, and fantastically produced by the folks at the Rover Dramawerks at the Cox Playhouse in Plano. Audience members should be prepared for quick set changes, amusing characterizations, and lots of laugh-out-loud entertainment. A long-standing tradition has been in place at Rover Dramawerks to solicit witty, poignant, clever, humorous, short (no longer than ten minutes) vignettes featuring a talented entourage of actors and a bevy of gifted directors to present a collection of Ten Minute Comedies. They then stage them with simplistic sets and basic stage lighting in rapid fire secession. The audience goes from a witch’s eerie house occupied by newly-weds to the chagrin of the family, to a farcical job interview in a game of scientific charades, to a creative writing professor retiring to a life as a male stripper (giggling already, I see) to a trio of over- eager- inept criminals, to a parody of a franchise movie revivals of a murderous living doll, to a contrary ATM with the personality of a trickster, to an all talk non-music radio station talking about music-not playing music but talking about music, then there are  two frustrated and hungry vegan’s out on a lonely stretch of highway salivating to the thoughts of the absolutely forbidden protein of meat,  to an icky and wacky meeting of a work friend’s boyfriend, which is all relative.

Over one hundred submissions were received by Rover Dramawerks and nine of these were selected to be showcased for the audience. This cacophony of hilarity runs from July 30 to August 15. It is an evening of talent and fun all rapidly comprised in ten minutes of cleverness, silliness, and wit, back-to-back-to-back-to back-to… well, you get the concept.

Cast members display impressive dexterity joyfully entertaining and generating guffaws- their ability to smoothly transition and appear in multiple roles is loads of fun. Their contributions are deservedly worthy of applause. Staging and presentation is guided by nine patient and fun-loving directors organized under the supervision of Artistic Director Carol M. Rice. These nine Ten Minute Comedies are organized and compiled with a flow that allows for one -after- the-other- after- the-other to hold the interest and rapt attention of the audience.

Each evening Rover Dramawerks invites audience members to vote on their gem of choice in these wonderfully wacky wildly diverse vignettes of humor and farce and fun. It is an evening of relaxation and laughs to be appreciated and is just what the doctor ordered. Tickets can be purchased at roverdramawerks.com.

DR