South Stream Productions: This Doesn't End Well

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poster by Jennifer Sanderson

This Doesn't End Well

Funny thing: Most playwrights don’t tell you about the rejection letters they’ve gotten while talking up their next show. But South Stream Productions cofounder Brook North is up-front about his showcase of seven (“and a half,” he adds) ten-minute plays that kicks off the regional 2019 theater season Friday night. All of them, he notes with pride, have been rejected by at least one theatrical company—and that, in itself, is something of a meta-endorsement for an evening of comedies and serious works about things going very, very wrong. (Of course, many of North’s selections have also been successfully staged in festivals stretching from Wisconsin to San Miguel de Allende.) In the dark comedy Lunch Break, a worker stuck in a meaningless day job starts thinking outside the cubicle after getting fed up with coworkers. In Clover, a first-contact scenario goes sideways when invading aliens turn out to be much cuter (and furrier) than anything Ridley Scott ever dreamed of. North directs a top-flight septet including Katie Barrett and cofounder John Honeycutt. —Byron Woods