Say what you will about the depressing state of Off-Off-Broadway theater (and it certainly is depressing), one thing you can’t complain about is the unprecedented quantity of theater that currently exists in New York City. Quality theater, and quality coverage, is what’s missing, and venturing Off-Off-Broadway has increasingly turned into a crapshoot for entertainment. But here’s a good rule of thumb for your future New York theater ventures: if the show is a product of No Tea Productions, you’ll almost certainly be entertained, and maybe even moved.
I may have gone a tad overboard when I claimed that the success of The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy was “a reason for hope for American theater,” a statement that has followed the publicity of No Tea wherever they have gone, but with the company's top-notch reworkings of one-act love story vignettes in Plucking Failure Like Ripe Fruit, I was glad to see my enthusiasm for my first experience of the company was no fluke. Ripe Fruit is not as wholly entertaining as Mark and Andy—a natural product of the format—but the quality of the cast, execution and spirit are just as strong.
The selection of plays is short and sweet, with a mix of established playwrights like Harold Pinter, David Ives, and David Auburn with some, younger, more ragged, indie-mined playwrights. Though the show claims to be “A Night of One-Act Romantic Tragedies,” Ripe Fruit offers as many glimpses of hope as it does of unrequited love. Its spirit is perfectly in tune with one of the most dismal holiday seasons in recent memory. In a time when all seems hopeless, just making a human connection—any connection—can be enough to get you through. Even recognizing the possibility of such a connection can be enough. This spirit makes Ripe Fruit strangely uplifting, and one of the better shows you can see while alone in New York around Christmas time.
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