THEATER REVIEW: Some TeCo entries need more work to bring them to completion

12:00 AM CST on Saturday, April 1, 2006

By MANUEL MENDOZA / The Dallas Morning News

Sin can be funny.

Even when quoting Scripture or "promoting family values" – the mission of TeCo Theatrical Productions – the pieces in its 2006 New Play Competition get their pop from laughing at lust.

Only one of the six shorts by local playwrights, Joseph S. Mosley's wild comedy Mae Pearl Turns 80, is fully realized.

Three lingering guests (Otis Gaines, Audrey Shabazz and Barbara Woods) suggestively shuck and jive as they wait for the birthday octogenarian (Sharon Curtis) to finally show up.

When she does, well, the physical shenanigans get more hilarious.

Mae Pearl started the second half of the program on opening night Thursday at Fair Park's Hall of State, and suddenly the children in the audience had vanished. It was as if their parents knew that after intermission it was for adults only.

Ms. Curtis also lights up the final miniplay, She'Niece Crisis by Bridgette Monroe, as the rough-talking title character, who seeks advice from her pastor on the eve of a guest appearance on The Maury Povich Show.

Ms. Monroe has written a brilliant second act satirizing the calculated phoniness of daytime talk shows, adding a pinch for pathos over She'Niece's search for her baby's daddy.

The first part, featuring some entertaining hip-hop dancing by Kieron and Kiosh Monroe, needs more development to set up She'Niece's entrance.

Eric Robinson Sr., starring in Brynndah Hick Turnbo's No Sex in the City as a young man trying to figure out how to refrain with his girlfriend until marriage and in William Borden's It's So Wowoo as a married man who thinks he's an alien, also stands out with his energetic performances.

Keeping up with him in both is Kristen Carroll as a nutty Lovaholics Anonymous advocate and his wife from another planet. David Jones Butler also does a credible job in his own Money Madness as a guy facing the conundrum of found cash.

Most of the pieces, including Willie Holmes' The Big Bang Theory, wrestle with the war between the sexes and between man and God.

Pat answers don't come, thank the Lord, but often the shorts end abruptly or suffer rough patches.

Through the program's run ending next weekend, audiences are voting for their favorites. If the demonstrative crowd Thursday is any sign, they won't be shy about it.

The winner gets $1,000 and a pair of Southwest Airlines round-trip tickets.

E-mail mmendoza@dallasnews.com

Continues at 8 tonight and next Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Hall of State at Fair Park, 3939 Grand Ave. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 214-948-0716, www.tecotheater.org.