A good one-act play should feel complete unto itself. Unfortunately, as the offerings in the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s “Marathon 2011: Series B” too often demonstrate, contemporary playwrights are more likely to deliver half-baked vignettes than fully realized works. A happy exception is Steven Sater’s “Mrs. Jones and the Man from Dixieland.” This short poetic drama, set in the long-ago Deep South, depicts several encounters between a blind African-American woman clutching her infant and a courtly white man bearing gifts. We eventually discover that there’s a more metaphysical purpose to his visits, the exact nature of which prompted intense audience debate afterward. The emotional impact of the piece is further heightened by a haunting song composed by the playwright and his “Spring Awakening” collaborator, Duncan Sheik.
Among the other offerings, only Cassandra Medley’s “Cell” offers up provocative themes. Angry confrontations ensue within a family of three African-American women who work together at an immigration detention center when the youngest becomes too emotionally involved with the detainees.
The rest of the evening suffers from excessive cutesiness. David Zellnik’s “For Elise,” about an elderly Jewish woman’s testy encounter with her two grandchildren — one gay, the other Hasidic — too often settles for easy laughs. Michael Louis Wells’ “Two from the Line,” depicting the angst between two young men when one of them admits his attraction to the other, is written and played far too broadly.
Jacquelyn Reingold’s “I Know” at least has some genuine charm to offset its slightness. A longtime unmarried couple reaches a turning point in their relationship, ostensibly because of an infidelity from decades earlier. While the characters, endearingly played by Beth Dixon and Jack Davidson, are thoroughly winning, the play, like most of the others, feels maddeningly incomplete.