Review: 12TH ANNUAL LABUTE NEW THEATER FESTIVAL at St. Louis Actors’ Studio

The 12th Annual LaBute New Theatre Festival features new works by playwrights who hail from Kentucky, New York, Utah, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, plus a new work from festival’s namesake Neil LaBute. This year’s crop of plays, produced by St. Louis Actors’ studio includes three comedies, two comedic dramas, and a more serious piece.

Over 100 submissions are received for each year’s festival and are reviewed by a selection committee helmed by Neil LaBute and St. Louis Actors’ Studio founder and Artistic Director William Roth. The committee selects up to eight plays each year and collaborates with the playwrights to ensure readiness for the stage.

Directorial duties for the 2026 production were split between two of the finest local actors, Wendy Renée Greenwood and Eric Dean White. Greenwood has two prior LaBute Festival directing credits and White has acted in the festival three times.

The directors selected a highly skilled acting ensemble led by scene stealers Jade Cash and Tyler Crandall. Cash and Crandall, along with Xander Huber and Anthony Wininger bring inanimate objects to life in Junk Drawer.

Best in Show – Erin Fitzgerald’s witty and pun-filled Junk Drawer, hilariously directed by Eric Dean White, examines what life must be like for a forgotten penny, poker chip, and magic marker stuck in the back of the kitchen junk drawer. White elicits wonderful portrays from this trio of actors whose characters are desperate to escape their forgotten existence. Fitzgerald’s clever tongue-in-cheek script is reminiscent of the forgotten toys in Pixar’s Toy Story movies. The 15-minute laugher has more giggles than many full-length comedies.

Eric Dean White’s sharp sense of comedic timing was also on display in Nicolas Dunn’s macabre The Resurrection Men and Domenick Scudera’s comedic drama The Rules. White shows a keen sense for using pauses, cue pick up speed, silence, breaking down text, and pacing to tell a story.

The Resurrection Men relies on gallows humor. Dunn’s dark comedic take on bumbling Irish grave robbers bickering is morbidly funny. Anthony Wininger shows his skill with an Irish brogue in this play, and he also adopts a strong, blunt Long Island accent in The Rules.

Scudera’s The Rules examines the relationship between two estranged brothers who are stuck together on a long car ride from an unnamed New York airport to their childhood home on Long Island. Tyler Crandall is a scene stealer with his unforced acting and his courage sporting Amanda Brasher’s revealing open shirt and short shorts. The Rules is a beautifully written dramedy that shows how a tragedy can open communication and re-establish a relationship between siblings who have lost their appreciation for each other.

Wendy Renée Greenwood was saddled with directing Cameron Michles’ lengthy relationship drama Go Fish. Despite Greenwood’s straightforward vision and crisp pacing, she simply could not save the play from its overwritten and bloated script. Go Fish takes on the heavy subject of sexual abuse and the many emotions the victim experiences, especially when they find themselves face-to-face with their assailant a decade after the event. There are unnecessary flash backs and an antiquated belief about what “causes” someone to be a homosexual. Michles’ script may have been empathy inducing several decades ago, but today, her narrative just feels dated and out of touch.

Greenwood’s other two directing efforts included John Pierson’s Little Johnny Knows Things and Neil LaBute’s Brunch.

Little Johnny Knows Things featured a disquieting performance by the always dependable Xander Huber as a not-very-good ventriloquist. His emotional connection to his clairvoyant dummy is a little less than eerie, but still odd. Pierson’s cute script works except for the histrionic reaction of Ryan (played by Nick Barrows), a stranger on a park bench. Whether Ryan’s reaction to the puppet was in the playwright’s stage directions, a directorial choice, or an acting choice, a subtler, more deadpan reaction would have added to the comedic creepiness Pierson was trying to achieve.

LaBute’s Brunch is a twisty little two-hander about an unsolved mystery. Seems one of the two friends meeting for brunch may have something to hide. Caitlin Mickey (Candice) and Jade Cash (Shasta) excel as two friends discussing Candice’s husband’s disappearance. Mickey and Cash say more with physical acting than they do with LaBute’s meticulously constructed dialogue. It’s a fun 15-minutes.

The LaBute Festival closed on Sunday, July 26, 2026. Plans are underway for the 13th Annual LaBute New Theater Festival that will be staged by St. Louis Actors’ Studio July 9-25, 2027. Visit stlas.org for more information.

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