The ever expanding ‘Short and Sweet’ play festival now includes heats of the event being performed at NIDA Parade’s Playhouse theatre. I went along to see the opening week at NIDA.

Perennially, the most attractive aspect of this festival is the wide variety of ideas that playwrights come up with for their mini plays. Week 1, held at NIDA between February 9 and 13, was no exception. These were my picks from the night:-

Kuranda Seyit’s piece ‘Waiting For Mamdouh’ was a moving piece about Maha Habib’s anguish as, together with her four children, she waited for her husband Mamdouh to come home after being taken away by ASIO. What made the piece more moving was that Mamdouh Habib played the lead role himself.

Victorian playwright Tim Hehir’s ‘Pride and Prejudice- In Ten Minutes Flat’ was a lot of fun. I guess Hehir must have been inspired by plays such as the madcap ‘Shakespeare in 90 Minutes’. Hehir’s play has been chosen to go through to the finals.

Lismore playwright Bette Guy’s ‘Hibiscus Memories’, Bette traveled down to see her play performed, was a poignant play on the all too familiar story of a remaining parent being pushed to leave the family home and to go into care by her children after her partner dies.

Elisabeth Pulsford’s ‘Superfossils’ was a darkly comic piece about the residents of a nursing home, all of whom have seen much better days, who hatch a plot to escape.

Aoise Stratford’s piece ‘The Closet’ was an imaginative, comic piece where kids toys take on a life of their own, after being ‘expelled’ and made to live in the closet. The cast, Kevin Curley, Anthony Hunt and Simone Oliver, had a great time.

Jackie Greenwood’s entertaining ‘Russell Crowe, Gupta and the Dalek’ was a lot of fun featuring a suitably gruff Russell Crowe caught up in a rickshaw driving along the streets of Calcutta with a garrulous taxi driver and a very cheeky space alien.

The Gala Final of Short and Sweet takes place on the 13th March at the Parade Theatre, NIDA.