Number dramas

7 Affidavits on Authority; The Three of Cups

Aisle Hop by Anne Marie Donahue

Some ink was spilled in praise of Pet Brick Productions' staging of David Mamet's The Water Engine. Now, Pet Brick is in for another petting for its world-premiere production of 7 Affidavits on Authority (at The Tremont Theater through October 1). Written by Brandon Toropov and co-produced by Theatrics!, these seven vignettes showcase the range of four fine actors (Rachel Grissom, Sophie Parker, Gregory Steras, and the author). Under the detailed and imaginative direction of Betsy Carpenter, this quartet carry off scenes that differ dramatically in tone and style, from almost realistic to hallucinatory. Although 7 Affidavits doesn't deliver the thematic consistency the title promises, the acting is certainly authoritative.

Like the Mamet work that's running on the same spare stage, 7 Affidavits is fragmented and deliberately confusing. More often than not, sense plays second fiddle to style and atmosphere. Although a couple of the vignettes are funny, an air of anxiety wafts through them all. In "Dear Applicant," a "liberal-arts wimp" desperate for a job turns into a vindictive tyrant once she has the authority to hire and fire. In the Pinteresque "Biting Through," a tough state governor coldly confronts her husband about a scandal that could ruin their marriage and her political career. "The Night Before" is an absurdist nightmare in which a young man resisting a law career is taken on a long (too long) guilt trip by his blaming, shaming parents on the eve of a big exam.

As if in lieu of intermission, "Face It" offers a brief break from angst. A fast-paced, relatively realistic piece about hypocritical right-wing moralists who proselytize on the radio, it's more like traditional sketch comedy than anything else in the show. Darkness descends again in "On the Menu at this Restaurant": though it might be better without the subplot about a botched Web site, this harrowing memory playlet, which centers on two angry siblings who discuss their dead parents and their own incestuous love, offers twisted pathos and evocative hints of stories yet to be told.

Death and the bruises it leaves on the living are explored more straightforwardly in the last two vignettes. In "Closing Time," a pregnant gatekeeper at a dump outside a town decimated by chemically induced cancer berates a hapless man she blames without reason for the demise of her family. In the last affidavit, "Chance of Your Life," a milquetoast man on an airplane recalls his marriage and relives its final moments while the stewardess morphs into his dear dead wife and back again. Although nothing in 7 Affidavits tops "On the Menu," Toropov's closing items are anything but anticlimactic.

Despite the bizarre sex scene at the end, there's no climax in Sinan Ünel's The Three of Cups (at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre through September 24). Indeed, there's not even much of an arc to the play, in part because playwright plays fast and loose with time and space.

Set in a small apartment in a Midwestern college town, The Three of Cups circles around a romantic triangle made up of three men in their early 20s. The play opens as Paul begs his live-in lover, Greg, to turn off a recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which is reaching its own intense climax. The action, however, begins with the arrival of Mike, Paul's ex-lover.

"Gay! And tragic! . . . utterly melodramatic" is how Greg describes Tchaikovsky. The same description would suit the play. Although Ünel's dialogue is natural and his characters (ably acted by Joseph MacDougall, Brian McManamon, and Christopher Thorn) seem authentic, his story of obsession and betrayal is stale stuff. Perhaps in an effort to freshen up the material, he indulges in structural experiments that mix past and present and permit each character to be invisible to the others at times. Well before the end, unanswered questions concerning when and why who is aware of whom become tedious, and the plight of Ünel's tangled threesome loses what interest it had.