Cab Fare for the Common Man

This mixtape of short comic plays from US writer Mark Harvey Levine is cute in more than one sense of the word. First there’s the tone – sweet but not sickly, courtesy of sugary acoustic numbers, pleasingly offbeat love stories and snappy, mannered dialogue.

Then, secondly, there’s the tricksy structure lent by Shades, snippets around which the other plays are arranged. It revels in a Rubik’s Cube theme that begins with ‘White’, the straightforward scene of a preening artist showing off to an old flame and her jealous boyfriend. Interspersed throughout, the puzzle twists, so to speak, and playful ‘Red’ or ‘Yellow’ variations shed new light on the same sequence.

And yes, thirdly, there’s that conspicuously pretty young cast of four – a fact only worth mentioning because it makes the neurotic misfits of Superhero, clad in tablecloth cape and marigolds, that bit harder to believe. Each performs with gusto and a clear appreciation of the script’s humour, but occasional overplaying detracts from the writing (as in the slightly melodramatic The Kiss), as do the affected and largely unnecessary Noo Yawk or Deep South accents.

Though Levine’s neat premises often come at the cost of subtlety, watching them unfold can be rewarding, such as when LA 8AM’s inventive look at a life in statistics works towards a poignant twist. 

Cab Fare seems to come from the same school of quirkiness as recent American indie flicks, populated as it is by candid, tenderhearted oddballs knocking around faux profundities. It’s innocent of mainstream romcom schmaltz, but it bears a scarcely more faithful resemblance to the mundane realities of unscripted relationships.

Few of the morsels offered up here are as clever as they seem to think they are, but as a light and charming hour of bite-sized theatre, this certainly satisfies.