‘More of Our Parts,” described as “6 New Plays About Disability in 70 Minutes,” perfectly fulfills the mission of its producing company, Theater Breaking Through Barriers.
Known for its integration of able-bodied performers and those with disabilities, the groundbreaking off-Broadway troupe pointedly doesn’t traffic in political correctness. This entertaining evening of newly commissioned one-acts by such well-known playwrights as Neil LaBute and A.R. Gurney notably lacks a shred of preachiness.
That’s especially true of Bruce Graham’s “The Ahhh Factor,” in which a director and screenwriter argue over a nude scene for their film’s deaf female star, with the director horrified by the prospect of “blatantly showing impaired nudity.” Their freewheeling debate — which includes references to Hattie McDaniel, Harold Russell (a veteran who lost his hands in WWII, then won an Oscar for “The Best Years of Our Lives”) and Dickens’ Tiny Tim — hilariously encapsulates prejudicial attitudes toward the disabled while lampooning Hollywood in the process.
Gurney gives us another standout with “The Interview,” in which a father is aghast to learn that his teenage son didn’t reference his partial deafness during a college admissions interview. The young man’s stubborn refusal to trade on his disability — “I don’t want to be a special case,” he insists — is both touchingly and amusingly rendered.
LaBute’s typically pungent “The Wager” concerns a boorish yuppie who horrifies his girlfriend when he responds to a black, wheelchair-bound beggar’s request for money by offering a deal: If the beggar can’t correctly guess which hand is holding the bills, he’ll receive a punch instead of the cash that will enable him to “buy a chicken wing at KFC or a slice of watermelon.” The encounter ends with a narrative twist that upends everything we’ve seen.
The disparate plays deal with their themes in both direct and oblique fashion.
In Jeffrey Sweet’s moving “A Little Family Time,” a famed author is forced to confront his Down syndrome-afflicted son who he has long neglected.
More whimsical are Bekah Brunstetter’s “After Breakfast, Maybe,” in which a physically disabled young woman (the terrific Shannon DeVido) confesses her plan to “take over the world” to her mother over a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, and Samuel D. Hunter’s “Geese,” about a wheelchair-bound woman (DeVido, again) who tries to prevent a young worker from capturing the birds that have overrun their city park.
Well-acted by the ensemble and briskly staged by Patricia Birch (“Grease”) and the company’s artistic director, Ike Schambelan, among others, the evening easily adds up to more than the sum of its “Parts.”