Delirium tremens

The basic ingredients for drama are not hard to come by. All you really need are two actors in front of a group of people, with everything else — music, props, stage, — being gravy. The audience itself may not even be necessary, but then you get into one of those Zen situations: If actors perform in a forest and there’s no one around to applaud, should they take a bow? The other crucial element, of course, is practice, practice, practice. The new young theater group Belladonna Repertory makes an ambitious debut with its production Tremors, an evening of one-acts staged at Lademacher Performing Arts Center at the Atlanta International School. Tremors proves that the Belladonna group has enthusiasm to spare but needs some more experience for their grasp to meet their reach.

Each of Tremors’ short plays are two-actor studies, beginning with Leonard Melfi’s “Birdbath.” Set in New York in the early 1960s, “Birdbath” depicts two wounded souls turning to each other, as blue-collar poet Frankie (Frederick Sheldon) brings home the anxiety-ridden usherette Velma (Jocelyn Kuritsky). The play alternates from the romantic to the sinister, and you’re never sure if Frankie will prove a rough-hewn gentleman or a date rapist. And Velma has surprises of her own.

Kuritsky nicely conveys Velma’s nervousness and uptight body language, chattering about how she’s never received a Valentine’s card and lives with her domineering mother. Nevertheless, this particular actress, who would not look out of place on a fashion runway, isn’t 100 percent convincing in an ugly duckling role.

The second play, “Something in the Basement,” takes as a jumping-off point the cliché that wives forever send their husbands out of bed to investigate night-time noises in the cellar. But in Don Nigro’s script, the marriage of Philip (Terence Vallelunga) and Mary (Tiffany Dyer) is especially fraught due to their inability to bear a child. Mary is frigid, brittle and sarcastic, nastily needling her husband at every opportunity.

“Basement” contains interesting insights into a strained marriage and has some effectively pointed dialogue. But while Vallelunga and Dyer make a credibly bickering couple, the action grows tedious and repetitive as the basement becomes a Freudian, metaphorical place, not so much a room in a house as the representation of the hidden side of the psyche.

Tremors features two short sketches identified as “commercial breaks,” both written by Jason Munger. “Here and There’s” telephone conversation proves a frivolous exercise in semantics (“If you’re there you can’t be here”), but “GoodBoxes” is a more amusing argument as to whether or not boxes are as good as human beings.

The final play, Tom Eyen’s “The White Whore & The Bit Player,” would be unendurable without its flashes of coarse comedy. It offers a dialogue between two women, black-clad Lauan Ivey and white-wearing Tiffany Dyer, who may or may not be the same person, confined in a mental institution. Eyen’s play may take inspiration from the breakdown of movie star Frances Farmer, with both women ranting about the vicissitudes of their show business careers.

“The White Whore” can be almost hilariously pretentious and self-conscious, with the actresses striking awkward poses, occasionally rolling their eyes skyward, crying to their mothers and spouting lines like, “Banging merrily against the penis-pendulum of time.” It contains some funny moments as they hark back to dreadful films about the Titanic and one titled The Pregnant Popette. But the two-bit religious imagery sinks the lively aspects, and even talk about “screwing” becomes boring after awhile.

The founders of Belladonna Repertory — Ivey, Dyer, Vallelunga and Kuritsky — each direct the different works and will benefit from the learning process of staging Tremors. Too often the production doesn’t tap the plays’ full possibilities for humor and tension, instead opting for standard-issue histrionics. The production has longer and more complicated set changes than it needs, and the plays are structured so that the intermission comes after well over an hour and a half.

The Lademacher Performing Arts Center is a relatively recent addition to the Atlanta International School, but proves a comfortable auditorium that’s small enough to maintain theatrical intimacy and a good place to see plays in the future. Tremors comes across as an apprenticeship production, but Belladonna Repertory has the potential to shake things up in the future.

Tremors plays through Aug. 13 at Lademacher Performing Arts Center, Atlanta International School, 2890 N. Fulton Drive, with performances at 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. and 7 p.m. Sun. $15. 404-870-5827.