HALFWAY CONTENT
So it was inevitable that someone would put together an evening of ten-minute plays. What was not inevitable was that this show–Halfway Content, the inaugural production of the newly formed Eclipse Theatre Company–would be free of the sort of awkwardness, inhibition, and artistic self-indulgence that sinks most first productions.
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Mary Sue Price’s That Midnight Rodeo, about a cowgirl trying to decide whether to end her career or abort her baby, falls somewhere between Guernica and Long Walk to Forever. At first Price approaches the question with the subtlety with which Hemingway treated the topic in “Hills Like White Elephants” (she’s helped along by Amy Pietz’s finely layered performance). But then she falls into painful didacticism, forcing her characters to say things they say only on made-for-TV movies and deflating the dramatic tension of the first half: “I have to do this now. I have spent my whole life getting here.”
