David Kronke: Naked TV, sans actual nudity
For the third year, Fox is presenting Naked TV, a pretty smart way of developing writers for the network. Essentially, they recruit promising writers – this year, it’s six New York playwrights – who write short one-acts (in the past, the scripts were about the length of a sitcom pilot; this year, they’re a bit shorter) which are presented live at Santa Monica’s Edgemar Center for the Arts. Essentially, this is mounting TV pilots on the cheap, costing a fraction of a fraction of the million or so bucks it’d require to commit one to film or videotape.
“Naked TV 3� previewed Saturday. Two years back, two of the six one-acts looked like viable sitcoms; last year, nothing really seemed to work. Neither production has produced a show that has reached it to the air, though they did result in network deals with five of the 12 participating writers.
This year’s crop of scripts was probably the best yet, though my two favorites were self-contained works that seem unlikely to be spun off into actual series. The first one-act is the evening’s highlight: Deidre O’Connor’s “Penicillin,� a very funny take on an unlikely subject for humor, Chlamydia. Jane Cho stars as a young woman nervously awaiting her appointment in a clinic, who is dismayed when the young man (Phillip Vaiden) who may have given her the STD shows up for ostensible moral support if not also to win her back but mainly only manages to annoy her.
In the evening’s standout turn, Vaiden is breezily hilarious as the self-proclaimed “jackass� who tries to ingratiate himself with a woman who wants nothing to do with him, for obvious reasons; Cho is likewise good as she struggles to resist the louse’s indisputable charms.
Graham Gordy’s “Waning Poetic by Chip Dunnigan� is a tease of a piece that feels personal, Gordy getting something off his chest in a lark. John Forest stars as Chip, the playlet’s ostensible author; he interrupts his own production, admits it’s not very good, and dissembles into a monologue about an audience member in the front row that he used to date. Forest gets the humor, the pathos and the sense that he’s making it up as he goes along just right.
Elizabeth Meriwether’s “Sutton� involves a D.C. Secret Service agent and a Jenna Bush-like party girl who escaped his protection for the night. Dohn Norwood, as the agent, creates a credible character, and the relationship feels like one that could be sustained over a series.
Kathryn Walat’s “Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen� feels pretty generically sitcom-y. Walat’s writing can be clever, but the cast has been directed in a fairly one-note fashion.
Liz Flahive’s “No Legroom� has some logistical glitches, beginning with the premise – why are six people in a car at 3 a.m. (some in pajamas and two or three apparently from out of state) so a young woman can pop into her fiancé’s apartment and break up with him? But Julie Mann and Kelli Dawn Hancock provide laughs as a couple of the random passengers.
As for the remaining one-act, Mat Smart’s “The Paranoia of a Stay-At-Home Dad in Suburban Middle America,� well, I’ll just say that while it was being presented, I noticed members of the on-stage band who performed between set changes smirking at one another. Justifiably, I might add.
The evening’s producers opened with a caveat that these were works in progress (the actual opening is Thursday), but there didn’t seem to be too many glitches, except sound effects problems in “No Legroom� and, well, the whole of “Stay-At-Home Dad.� “Naked TV 3� will be presented Thursday-Sunday through May 7.
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