Meny Beriro’s Sea Coast of Chili has a very interesting premise – four lifelong friends coming together to review their history and their future as they move into their twilight years.   As they discuss their past, they each recognize that they have led less than the fulfilled lives that they dreamed of when they first came together as Catholic middle school children left alone at school to wait for their working parents to pick them up after an early dismissal during a storm.  They reminisce about getting lost in Forest Park and the sense of danger and adventure that that provided.  They recall unrequited love buried for 40 years.

A meeting called by Bella (Leslie Fleming) serves as the catalyst for their exploration.  She “inspires” their obligation to respond because she has attempted suicide a year previous as she is unable to move on from the death of the husband who provided the love and stability she required.  The friends fear the return of her depression. 

But Bella has brought them together to share “good” news.  She is moving to the seacoast of Chili to fulfill her encyclopedia Britannica inspired childhood dream of living in the picture that gave her the best fantasies of her childhood.  This leads Catherine (Laura Tewksbury), Ed (Michael Donaldson) and the sullen and emotionally closed Adam (Ken Coughlin) to review their own past, regrets and motivation to move to the future.

This is a very good 60-minute play, unfortunately Beriro felt the need to stretch it to a too long 75 minutes.  Those last 15 minutes tend to get repetitive as the same ideas are continuously repeated.  Sometimes less is more and that is certainly the case here.

The second play of the evening is ATA  Artistic Director James Jennings’ 30-minute short play Birds in the Meadow.   While Julie Zimmermann (Joan), Phil Oetiker (Jack) and Jiening Zhu (Wanda) all do a solid job, Jennings has made them each different levels of the other and each seems to be stuck in the irrational world of trailer trash.  Perhaps not unrealistic, but not very good for a play. 

 “Joan” is unhinged by stories of murder and rape that seem epidemic to her as she reads newspaper after newspaper and gets irrationally excited.  Husband “Jack” seems to recognize her irrationality and attempts to bring her back to reality at the beginning of the play.  But that only last until trailer park manager “Wanda” knocks on their door to explain an eviction notice improperly placed on Jack and Joan’s door.  At that point Jack becomes as irrational as Joan and completely protective of her and her beliefs.  But strangely, from a story telling point of view, Wanda both sympathizes and empathizes with Jack and Joan as they all contemplate the actions they can “force” politicians to take to deal with “out of control” societal violence.  The play lacks an on-stage foil for any of the characters and since none of them represent any type of rationality it becomes difficult to relate to the story.  At least one of the characters needs to occupy a different mindset to give the production bite.