Silver Spring Stage presented the first act of Brian Friel’s Lovers, subtitled Winners, as well as Audrey Cefaly’s original work Stuck at the 2012 Maryland one-act festival, under the auspices of MCTFA.
The festival was held at the home of The Newtowne Players, the Three Notch Theatre in Lexington Park. It’s an interesting repurposed space, formerly a public library, in service as a theater for only the past half dozen years. There’s no enclosed tech booth, so you’re really better off calling the show from the deck (unless you want everyone to hear that a cue is coming up). I’ll know better next time. The playing space is a two-sided thrust with audience seating in a nice arc around it.
Over the course of Saturday, we had to contend with noise for the nearby naval air station only once. Jet flyers screaming overhead, scaring the terrapins, as my late navigator friend Jim might say.
The adjudicators were quite generous to the Stage, tapping both shows (along with two others) to move on to the combined festival for and new and published works to be held in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in April.
Funniest light cue ever: Montgomery Playhouse’s Pillow Talk.