Why would anyone want to go to the theater to watch a dozen actors, most with no stage experience, pair up to perform six scenes from six different plays?  If you had been at last night’s showcase that was the culmination of an acting class headed by Sunny Disney Fitchett and Art DeConciliis at Little Lake Theatre, you would have gotten a very entertaining answer to that question.  Skillfully directed by Ms. Fitchett and Mr. DeConciliis, these newcomers did a bang-up job of interpreting both iconic works and lesser-know gems.

          The evening started off with off-stage husband and wife Shankar Lakhavani and Kamana Mathur enacting a scene of burgeoning mutual attraction from A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room.”  While Mr. Lakhavani at first made his character of a furniture repairman a model of subtle disinterest in Ms. Mathur’s recent divorcee, he smoothly made the transition to casual and then not-so-casual pursuit of what was beginning to look like, to quote Claude Raines,  “The start of a beautiful friendship.” For her part, Ms. Mathur perfectly captured the natural patter of a somewhat nervous, yet determined, woman bartering for a second chance at romance.  The chemistry, as might be expected, was spot on throughout the scene, making the showcase’s initial entry a success.

           Next came a more inwardly emotional scene about the hopes and dreams of two unfulfilled but very different women who have a chance meeting at a café in Matthew Barber’s “Enchanted April.”  Played by Julie Acor and Mary Kieler, these two longing housewives share the same vision of a better life, but have very different ways of dealing with that vision.  Ms. Acor’s character springs to life when she sees an ad for a dream vacation in a local newspaper, an enthusiasm deftly portrayed by the actor through inflection and body language.  Ms. Kieler was successful in calling upon more subtle skills to communicate an inward feeling of desperation while speaking words that belied those very feelings.  Together they painted a beautiful portrait of both hope and hopelessness.

          The next scene was the first “rafter-shaker” of the evening.   Mary Beth Coll and Megan Zotis teamed up for a heavily dramatic confrontation  scene from “Mauritius” by Theresa Rebeck.  In this no-holds-barred outing, the actors played long-lost half-sisters, each with a bone to pick.  Ms. Coll’s character fancies herself as the more mature, pragmatic and nostalgic of the pair, but because of the actor’s understanding of the character’s back story, the audience wasn’t completely surprised when, after being backed into a corner, the older sister was capable of spewing as much venom as her opponent.  Ms Zotis, whose character was delightfully bombastic from start to finish, had the opposite challenge – to exhibit rage without going over the top and turning her damaged character into a cartoon – a feat that she pulled off with aplomb.

           The showcase got back to a lighter note with Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park.”  The scene, between a gregarious newlywed and her more conservative mother was played with seeming joy and delight by Lindsey Detrick and Margaret Fischer.  Ms. Detrick had the weighty task of playing “straight man” through most of the scene and was equal to the occasion, lobbing masterful set-ups to Fischer who took them and provided most of the scene’s biggest zingers.  When Ms. Detrick did get a chance to deliver a gag or two of her own, her timing proved to be as adept as her acting partner.  This scene was quintessential Simon in his early years and the pair more than did justice to an old chestnut.

          It is difficult to classify the next entry of the evening.   The scene from “Dinner With Friends” by Donald Margulies was, by turns, funny, moving and uncomfortable in that the audience seemed to be eavesdropping on a private conversation.  Susan Rosati and Valerie De Cesar play two old friends, sitting at the kitchen table discussing, among other things, the recent divorce of Ms. Rosati’s character.   The script calls for the new divorcee to show the character’s unspoken, (at first) resentment of her friend’s disapproval of her new relationship.  Ms. Rosati handled that assignment with subtle grace.  Ms. De Cesar’s character was also called upon to do a verbal tap dance around a delicate subject and then portray hurt and anger when her advice is rebuffed.  Here too, the actor traversed the necessary transition smoothly.

          The evening wrapped up with hilarity when Dianne Daley as a disgruntled customer and Rebecca S. Herron as a nauseatingly congenial garage worker took the stage in a scene from Joan Ackermann’s “Stanton’s Garage.”   Both actors did fine work portraying the theater’s one millionth Odd Couple with Ms. Delaney acting the counterpart to the prissy Felix and Ms. Herron taking on the playwright’s descendant of the loveable slob, Oscar.  Ms. Daley, as a wedding guest delayed on the way to the nuptials when her Volvo drops dead on the road, played the perfect foil for Ms. Herron’s blowsy, say-anything grease monkey, at first exhibiting only subtle snarkiness that seemed to go over the head of the babbling, oblivious character played to maximum effect by Ms. Herron.  But in the final minutes of the scene, it was Ms. Daley’s turn to explode and she did so with a delightful exhibition of temporary insanity that shocked both her nemesis and the audience.

           In short, the showcase at The Lake was fine example of what can be accomplished on stage when actors, even inexperienced ones, are given expert guidance and direction.  Let that be a lesson to anyone who strives to entertain an audience.