In a new departure, the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama is presenting three American plays in rotating repertory. Its whole drama season is based on plays about science and its impact on society, concerns that match those of other schools at CMU. But more specifically, these three plays focus on contemporary science and women. The three share a single set in CMU's Chosky Theatre, which has been reconfigured for the occasion.

Mojie Crigler, "FZZN GRRL"

Perhaps the world around you is never more explosive than when you're a teenager. Who, at that age, has the ability to recognize events that require careful defusing or those that might fizzle out, leaving only a rueful memory? And how many, in the excitement of youth, secretly desire that moment of detonation, when life spins out of control and, in the blink of an eye, the world changes? It might be for the worse, but at least it's different.

Chuck Hittinger and Jenny Gammello, whose character decides to build a nuclear reactor in "FZZN GRRL." Click photo for larger image. Three American Plays in Repertory Where: Chosky Theatre, Purnell Center, Carnegie Mellon, Oakland. What, When: • "FZZN GRRL": Tonight 7:30; Fri. 8 p.m. • "Slide Glide": Tomorrow 7:30 p.m.; Sat. 2 p.m. • "Gamma Rays": Fri. 3:30 p.m.; Sat. 8 p.m. Tickets: $8.50-$17; 412-268-2407.

Mojie Crigler's Ineke wants very much to live in that world of the future where something, maybe everything, is different -- parents who don't fight, friends who appreciate her, and the entire science community lauding her accomplishments. Crigler's "FZZN GRRL" doesn't tackle head-on the impact of modern science, but uses it as a metaphor for how we try to control life and how easily it escapes our control.

Ineke is a nerdy young teen with few friends and a desire to win the science fair and then, or maybe simultaneously, the Nobel Prize. She's quirky in ways that other teens don't appreciate. She gives science lectures to dolls and decides to build a nuclear reactor to wow the science fair judges.

It's interesting to see how Crigler plays with the notion of bombs and explosions, to watch Ineke's project develop while her life becomes more volatile. But Crigler needs to pace "FZZN GRRL" with a slower fuse. Its 90 minutes bump furiously by from one short scene to the next. She never explores any moments deeply and we get only a cursory look at the characters and their inner lives, even Ineke's.

In some way, the design elements work against the script. Dissonant music, a la Einstrzende Neubauten, accompanies scene changes. A frame of dangling baby doll parts suspends from the ceiling. It lends an Expressionist feel that isn't present in the script.

Perhaps sound designer Noah A. Mitz, scenery design coordinator Michelle Carello and director Jed Allen Harris are trying to get at something that feels like it's missing from "FZZN GRRL." The darkness of the topic cries out for a more theatrical dramaturgy.

The acting finds a nice balance of styles. Jenny Gammello as Ineke and Chuck Hittinger as her friend Manny allow all the energy of youth to bubble below the surface and, at times, to overflow. Gammello mixes shy reserve with desire, quick intelligence and unrecognized anger, and Hittinger vibrates with an uncontainable hunger for action -- both Ineke and Manny seem virtual time bombs.

Ineke's parents are less intriguing, giving Ethan Hova and Aimee DeShayes little to work with. They fight with each other, love and ignore Ineke, but are only superficially developed by Crigler.

Crigler's interest rests fully with Ineke, and she's well worth the attention.

Ineke's not a character we see often. A young woman full of potential, driven by a desire for scientific discovery, burning so brightly and so briefly, can't help but light up the stage.

-- By Anna Rosenstein,
Post-Gazette freelance critic

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Kia Corthron, "Slide Glide: The Slippery Slope"

The darkness of light, the common sense in the counter-intuitive, fear beating out wonder for the position of the true handmaiden of discovery -- these are the oxymoronic and weighty themes attacked in Kia Corthron's "Slide Glide: The Slippery Slope."

	Joshua Franzos Susan A. Heyward and Ashley-Nicole Sherman are down on the farm in "Slide Glide," which explores cloning and genetic engineering. Click photo for larger image.

Set on a rural Southern farm, the play opens with the reunion of twins separated as babies. Erma (Ashley-Nicole Sherman), who runs the farm, is a scientist by calling and a farmer by choice, reared by an adoptive family in the South, while Eloise (Susan A. Heyward) is a polished and prim Northerner who was raised by their biological mother. Eloise seeks out Erma looking for answers -- in the grand sense -- in the wake of the repeated trauma of multiple miscarriages. When both her birth mother and long-lost sister are thrust upon her life of quiet research and animal husbandry, Erma finds herself between a rock and a hard place.

Or perhaps just two rocks, since cloning, from fate's designated application of twins, all the way down the "slippery slope" to genetic engineering, is the catalyst for the show. Dolly the Sheep figures prominently, acting as shrill soothsayer, played here with chilling fatality by Abigail M. McFarlane.

This Carnegie Mellon production, directed by Mladen Kiselov, manages to accentuate nicely the contrasts among the three sisters (including Retta, Erma's adopted sister, played by Jesmille Darbouse) through use of a sparse set, which allows the audience to concentrate on the beautifully realistic pacing and dramatic balance demonstrated by the cast.

Corthron, a critic's darling among younger African-American playwrights, uses technological advances in genetics as a lens to focus the warm stereotypes of the black matriarchal family to a white-hot flashpoint.

At its best, the play delves into what makes humans who they are -- nature, nurture, accident or design -- while at the same time turning notions of "religious morality," and "benign science" on their heads. At other times, some might find the script goes over their heads, but if you hunker down and concentrate on the taut performances, you will be well rewarded.

-- By Philip A. Stephenson,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Paul Zindel, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"

Given the divorce rate of Americans, Tillie Hunsdorfer is not the only child growing up in a strangely mutated family surrounding. Living with her unstable mother, her half-crazy sister and a feeble old woman who is not her grandmother, Tillie takes refuge in growing marigold seeds that have been exposed to radioactivity as a project for her high school science class.

Geoffrey Hitch directs Paul Zindel's "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds." Although set in the '60s, the problems discussed in "The Effect" remain pressing today, a fact enhanced by the vivid interpretations of CMU's actors.

Claudia Duran as Tillie convincingly presents the agonies of trying to grow up like a normal girl, despite her family, her insufficiently stylish clothes, her struggle to support a psychologically unstable mother and her strange affection for scientific discoveries. When Duran virtually steps out of her role and onto a podium to present the grown-up Tillie, her performance gains extra depth through a distanced view of the events of the past. But even that distance does not make us forget the thousand little tragedies of her adolescence.

Tillie's supposedly insane sister Ruth is brilliantly portrayed by Kat Mandeville as a careless and deeply disturbed teenager who is yearning for a little peace of mind and some form of affection, either in the person of a high school admirer (she habitually stuffs her bra to attract young men) or -- in the absence of anyone else -- that of angora rabbit Peter.

The source of most of the Hunsdorfer sisters' distress is their deeply frustrated mother Beatrice, whose dreams exploded a long time ago in the harsh reality of being a single parent without higher education. Kylee Rousselot interprets the chain-smoking, neurotic and unaffectionate Beatrice with insight, reaching perfection when she tells her girls of her recurring nightmare, and in the long and empty sigh that represents her resentful life.

Nanny, a fragile boarder left by her career-focused daughter at the Hunsdorfers' to be taken care of, is realistically depicted by Ashton Heyl, and Eryn Joslyn as Janice is probably the most darkly comic rival a student ever had for a scientific competition.

Set designer Michelle Carello symbolizes the everyday gray-in-gray of Tillie's life through various layers of colorless clothes and blankets. Nice effects are also achieved by mysterious lighting (Scott Hay) and bewitching music (Nicole Broughton) during Tillie's solos.

-- By Monika Kugemann,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette