A mixed bag Dipping into Rite of Spring BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Rite of Spring: A Celebration of the Arts One-act plays and other entertainment. Presented by the Rhode Island Theatre Ensemble through May 7.

With its Rite of Spring: A Celebration of the Arts, the Rhode Island Theatre Ensemble has taken on an ambitious project —a seven-week performance festival. Things started off with the play Ismene, written and directed by David Eliet, and will conclude May 12 through 21 with New Works . . . On the Fringe, showcasing local playwrights. The festival, directed by Chris Perrotti, has been produced in conjunction with the Full Circle Arts Institute, a new Providence outreach and training organization.

The second part of the festival features a trio of plays, a couple of poems by Patricia MacAlpine, music, and what is billed as tribal dance but is recognized more widely as belly-dancing (the tribal fusion dance troupe Azar Maya performs the latter). At performances April 28 through 30, the Providence Gay Men’s Choir will sing.

The most entertaining short play of the evening is David Ives’s The Philadelphia, an easy-to-like surreal romp staged more than once around here. Ever have somebody plop down next to you, sigh like a punctured tire, and ask, "Did you ever have one of those days?" Well, Ives took that moment and ran with it into the Twilight Zone. Mark (Perrotti) arrives at a luncheonette to meet a friend, leaking complaints about a weird morning: the pharmacy didn’t have aspirin, a Jewish deli didn’t have pastrami and the guy at the newsstand had never heard of the Daily News. Oh, explains his friend Al (Jonathan Beebe), he’s "metaphysically in a Philadelphia." In one of those, you never get what you ask for. There are some little interplays with the waitress (Leann Atkins), such as asking for random beers until she says they only have Bud, which is what he wanted. Light and lively.

A bit of serious drama is also offered in Stars, by Romulus Linney. Alone out on the balcony at a posh penthouse cocktail party, a woman (C.J. Racinski) tells the tale of a love affair gone bad with a man (Perrotti) not her husband. He responds with a tale of a pick-up of his own, perhaps to one-up her with his own example of insensitivity and to maintain a comfortable level of emotional wariness before they agree to go to bed together. Well-performed.

The Apple, by local Jimmy Brunelle, is a skit rather than a play. Three pretentious art critics verbally arm wrestle over the aesthetic and conceptual significance of a minimalist work on a pedestal: a shiny red apple. The throng that accumulates to stick in their two cents include some schoolgirls, a crazed derelict, and a woman rapturous over the object. (That is the one imaginatively written character here, hilariously performed by Nicole Maynard, channeling the spirit of the fruit.) This all peters out more than ends, with arbitrary agreement despite previous differences of opinion. As they sneered in the ’20s: "Oh, applesauce."

The above plays will be performed again April 28 through 30. The last weekend of Full Circle Fest, May 5 through 7, will include Jen Swain’s The Alchemist, replacing The Apple and some of the inter-act entertainment.

Rite of Spring will be presented at the First Unitarian Church, 250 Washington Street, Providence. Call (401) 383-5146.