Infringement Festival 2016: 3rd night review

NOTE: Enlightenment Café, Journey to the Centre of Ourselves, and Eureka! Zaire will be reviewed at a later date.
The third night of Infringement struck the right note with quirky, slightly random plays in a cohesive structure.
“*pop*” opened the block with two women kissing. That was the entirety of the play. They kissed, talked a little, kissed some more, talked a little more, and then it ended. The whole piece couldn’t have been more than four minutes.
The lack of content makes this play difficult to review.  It was too short to build any characters, plot, or themes, although the set and lighting were quite nice. Whether it was just titillation, a critique of titillation or an examination of relationships, its brevity worked against it.
“Murder Mystery (Big Reveal)” was much more straightforward. Narrated by Meg Shields, it was a comedic take on a Hitchcock suspense tale. A woman accidently murdered her friend, hid the body, and then invited another friend over for dinner, all while the narrator delivered sardonic exposition. The biggest laughs came at the start and the middle, as the play got the most mileage from its premise. It lost steam towards the end but still remained amusing and fun.
The block ended on a strange note with “3163x/y Tools and Fools.” It was set in a classroom with a bored professor delivering an incomprehensible lecture to dumbfounded students. The students offered him cookies, which sent him into a dream-like state.
The play veered into bizarre territory in the second half, with flubbed lines and a weird dance scene. But the opening captured the humour of a disastrous lecture, wringing good laughs from its setting.
The plays, while strange, flowed nicely into one another, with short running times and general fun tone.