draw. Best known for his Broadwaynsuccess A Walk in the Woods, Blessing’snlatest play concerns a true-crimenteam assigned to a Ted Bundy-likenserial killer to help him tell his story. Asnthe interviews progress both husbandnand wife start to question the moralitynof what they’re doing, and Blessingnskillfully traces their regression fromncontrol to submission, as they realizenthat the book of their career is at thenmercy of this murderer. Their apologiesnto him are painful to watch. Unfortunately,ndespite all the breast-beatingnabout morality, what we have herenis one more exploitation of horror, andnBlessing’s craftsmanship and the goodnperformances put in by Mark Shannon,nBernadette Sullivan, and MarkusnFlanagan cannot quite redeem thenplay.nEvery year it seems there is onenpainful failure and this year it was thenfestival’s only commissioned play, PaulnWalker’s A Passenger Train of Sixty-nOne Coaches. Walker is a true believernin experimental drama and has beennquoted as saying that any techniquenoutside the theatrical mainstream is fairngame. What that translates to, in thisnplay about Anthony Comstock, foundernof the Society for the Suppression ofnVice in late 19th-century New York, isnone long third-person narrative withnthe lines broken up among the variousncharacters. There are no scenes, per se,nand everything, right down to the casting,nis heavily ironic (Mr. Walker directednthis play as well). Comstock’snmother is played by an Asian actress,nhis doomed daughter by a young blacknactress, his adopted daughter by a man,nGeorge Bernard Shaw by a woman —nno doubt if Mr. Walker had been ablento get a horse to whinny the lines henwould have had Cananero III up therenas Comstock’s wife. Anthony Comstocknis hardly a sympathetic subject,nand as a National Endowment for thenArts grantee Walker no doubt is especiallynsensitive on the topic of vicensuppression. But the cacophony oiSixty-OnenCoaches is such that in the endnyou almost feel sorry for Comstock’snmemory, tossed around the stage in hisnunderwear as he has been for an hournand a halfnAlso experimental and also unsuccessfulnwas Eduardo Muchado’s storynof the nationalization by Castro of hisnfamily’s bus company. In the Eye of thenHurricane. Diane D’Aquila as Manuelanwas wonderful but could not savena play that was a campy tragedy, completenwith a 52-year-old homosexualnbrother who salsaed when upset. Marion(Christopher McCann) looked uponnhis nephew as fair game, and thennationalization as his personal revengenupon his clearly much more capablenbrother-in-law for taking precedence innthe family. None of this is really supposednto disturb us, or so I gathered,nbut if this is what passes for blacknhumor in Cuba and Miami, then itndoes not translate.nShem Bitterman’s Night-side, aboutna florist’s descent into madness followingna crime she may or may not havenwitnessed from her shop window, isnabout strong stufi^and hence dramatic.nBut there is no beauty to the languagenand no point — other than to portraynmadness — to the play.nAll these plays were invited. As fornthe ten-minute play contest winners,nthere were two this year: Neal Bell’snOut the Window and John Glore’snWhat She Found There. Both werenvery workmanlike; Out the Window isna nice short about a man recoveringnfrom an accident, still imprisoned in anwheelchair, who wakes one morningnafter a particularly heady party to findnhimself stranded atop the kitchen table.nJohn Glore’s play is built around thenconceit of Alice’s doppelganger passingnthrough the looking glass into ournworld just as Alice goes through tonhers. Anagrammatical Celia (playednvery well by Jennifer Hubbard) has justnhad a fling with Lou, a truck driver,nand is trying to explain herself and hernpoint of view to a man who has pickednup more than he bargained for. Shenhas some wonderful passages about hernworld-in-reverse. Without the sex itnwould be a beautiful short play, andnwith any luck Glore should be a playwrightnto watch for.nOnce again ATL’s regular companynmembers put in some of the bestnperformances of the festival, parfly becausenthey are generally very well castnin these productions (as was AdalenO’Brien as Netty in Cementville, thenwrestling Pajama Mama “who putsn’em to sleep”). There seemed to be angeneral consensus that this was one ofnATL’s better festival years, and if sonthere is no doubt it is because Jon Jorynhas left off commissioning novelistsnnnand returned to asking for plays fromnplaywrights. Or perhaps the mainnproblem was the idea of commissioningnanybody — of recently commissionednplays only Romulus Linney’s 2nwas outstanding, and this year thenfestival’s worst production was its onencommission. For next year David HenrynHwang, the author of M. Butterfly,nhas agreed to write a play on thensubject of interracial marriage, andnATL is still hoping to get somethingnout of novelist E.L. Doctorow. Onlyntime will tell whether Jory was right tonbet on either.nKatherine Dalton is the managingneditor of Chronicles.nFrom Death of Zukavsky.nJULY 1991/55n