Nicole Williams (left) and Tyler Borton rehearse “Waiting.” (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

As the lights come up on the opening scene in the evening of one-act plays presented by the Bromfield Drama Society, audience members see a stylized black and white set against a blue backdrop. The set provides a flexible base for four entertaining one-act plays with a variety of moods and subject matter.

The Drama Society presentation opened on Friday, Oct. 28; the Saturday performance was canceled because of weather conditions. Two more performances are scheduled for Friday, Nov. 4, and Saturday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m.

The first of the plays, "Sure Thing," by David Ives, takes a witty look at a boy-meets-girl situation in which either party can restart their conversation by ringing a bell. Betty and Bill, played by Katie Chambers and Daniel Jackson, can erase their verbal missteps or blunders as quickly as a typo on a computer.

"Infant Morality" by Craig Pospisil, presents an edgier situation, as Stephanie Hackett (Mackenzie Klem) and her husband Philip (Daniel Jackson) portray a power couple inquiring about the hospital's return policy on their baby. Neither the parents nor hospital administrator Pamela Warden (Katie House) sees a moral problem with this issue.

"Right? Wrong? We're dealing with larger issues here," Warden asserts. Only the humane hospital staff member Trish (Marcelle Hazoury) questions their approach.

The third play, "Waiting," is by Ethan Coen, one half of the well-known Coen brothers filmmakers. Not surprisingly, the work takes an absurdist approach. A man named Nelson (Tyler Borton) waits, with growing impatience, for entry into what seems to be a very bureaucratic heaven. He encounters a series of maddeningly unhelpful officials played by Laura Jarvis, Ben Senkowski, Emma Delaney, and Nicole Williams. The situation recalls the summation from Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit": "Hell is other people."

The evening's last offering also raises some existential questions, but in a more light-hearted manner. What are three chimps to do when their task is to type until they randomly produce "Hamlet," but they do not even know what "Hamlet" is? Presumably for encouragement, each chimp bears the name of a famous author—Milton (Jake Turchetta), Swift (Emma Raymond), and Kafka (Emma Sullivan).

Director and drama teacher Ted Zayka told the audience that his goal for this, the first production of the school year, was to include as many actors as possible. Zayka explained that the production was run almost entirely by the students themselves, including the scenery, lighting, and sound.

All the technical parts of the show worked well together. Doing scene changes in full view of an audience is always challenging, but the crew's silhouetted forms fit into the overall style of the plays.

Each of the four plays raises questions that leave the audience with issues to discuss, as well as humorous moments to chuckle over.