Fun and froth 2nd Story’s first ‘Wave’ of summer BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

Short Attention Span Theatre. It’s back. At 2nd Story Theatre. Five short plays per evening. Five payoffs or punchlines, no waiting.

This is the first of five "waves" coming at us every third week through the summer, all directed by Ed Shea. This time out it’s the frothier, funnier pieces that work best. In the five to 30 minutes of these playlets, with actors ranging from veterans to apprentices, it’s understandably difficult to build up to Shakespearean soliloquy gravitas.

The half-hour after intermission is recess time, following the opening hour of heavier dramatic lifting. We get a brief and breezy trifle by Shel Silverstein, Buy One, Get One Free. Here we have Merilee (Marg Cappelli) and Sherilee (Monique Shaghalian), two tarted-up street-corner hookers advertising their wares in improvised verse, rhyming everything with E: "In incense-filled tranquility / you’ll witness durability," punctuated by a pelvic thrust. That sort of thing. Eventually, along comes Lee (Richard Ring), with a PhD. from an Ivy League university, where he majored in economy, so he knows all about doubling the price so half-off sounds nice. (Sorry. It’s infectious.)

The funniest is the closing piece by A.R. Gurney. I don’t want to give too much away about The Problem, but I can harmlessly divulge the set-up. A husband (Rip Irving) is sitting reading when his wife (Joan Dillenback) enters, monumentally pregnant. She’d been hiding it with loose-fitting clothing, she explains. She cheerfully admits that the baby is not his, since they have not had sex together for five years (he would laugh at the absurdity of the act while she would whimper over the misery in the world, you see). As amiably, he agrees to raise it as his own — but hold on, the child will be black. (Gurney first staged this in London in 1973, so playing with the race issue had an edgier tone originally.) Don’t worry — all this doesn’t come across as random as it sounds.

The evening begins with Linda Her, by Harry Kondoleon. Carol (Robin Buteau) has just been traumatized by learning that a little girl her husband admired in kindergarten is now dead. We are to believe that she has been shocked honest, now ready to confront her life squarely, whether that means running away from home or blurting hurtful admissions to her longtime friend Janet (Michelle Roche). Nah. I don’t know if I’d believe Meryl Streep here if she distracted us with a perfect Swiss-German accent. This is one of those thankless roles about off-putting persons, where making them sympathetic would probably require a dishonest portrayal. Tom Roberts is here as Carol’s mostly sleeping husband, and Nora Roberts is their precocious daughter, heir to her mother’s ennui.

Leavening proceedings after that downer is Reservations for Two, by Lori Goodman. Those having reservations about each other are Anne (Jen Swain) and Jim (Rendueles Villalba), who are sipping drinks at a bar on their first date. It’s a Playwriting 101 premise that’s been done a thousand times, but not likely better than here, in either the writing or the performances. Jim drops word early on that he’d like to go home with Anne, but Villalba makes him come across as open rather than scheming. Swain has the tougher task, having to modulate her character from friendly apprehension up to shrill hysteria and then back again. Great job. Anne, you see, has the clear-eyed vision of a seer who can see with reluctant assurance to at least as far as morning. Why can men get away with outpourings of emotional gush while women risk violating their psychological space and send them fleeing if they do so? That’s the question. Hilariously answered.

The longest play of the evening, at a half-hour, is Tone Clusters, by Joyce Carol Oates. Now, you might know Oates for her dark novels of disaffected American life, most of which should print a suicide hotline number on the jacket. Here it takes a while to discern the situation, but eventually we see that a very troubled couple (Trisha McManus and Tim O’Brien) are in a radio interview. As the questioner (Nancy Geary Pereira) grows more convoluted and arcane in her questions, Oates is clearly having fun with some PBS pretentiousness that made her roll her eyes. The couple on the spot are maintaining the innocence of their 22-year-old son who lives with them, who has been arrested for the rape-murder of a schoolgirl neighbor. As details make the parents’ delusion more conclusive, dramatic tension over any possible change of mind or illumination on their part evaporates. It’s hard to detect what Oates is offering to us here, besides a carnival freak show peek at emotional cripples. O’Brien and MacManus are terrific, though, thoroughly inhabiting the couple and smartly pacing their deliveries.

But it doesn’t matter if one or two Short Attention Span playlets don’t work. As with New England weather, stick around for a few minutes and you’re in for a change.