Much of New Jersey playwright's Christopher Durang's work can be described as "the comedy of disorientation."  Much like the comedy of social awkwardness popularized in the U.S. by the British version of The Office, Durang's writing requires exquisite precision in tone and pacing or it falls apart completely.  The audience has to feel confident that it's the characters who feel disoriented, not the actors, and we certainly shouldn't wonder if their director knows what's going on.  One wrong move, and the whole production looks like a train wreck ...  which brings me, I'm afraid, to South Puget Sound Community College's presentation of Durang/Durang.

There were folks in the audience who loved every minute.  I suspect many were proud parents but, be that as it may, there was much to enjoy.  Durang/Durang is an anthology of short comedies; producer Don Welch chose several from that script and a few from separate collections of Durang's 20-century oeuvre.  These were assigned to brother Ron Welch and two student directors, Kasinda Starmer and Eric Colin Nast.  Wisely, the last sketch presented was the most amusing:  "The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of Where Babies Come From."  Somehow, it's even funnier than its title.  If only the rest of the show had been as polished as this piece and Starmer's set design.

I review college theatre with hesitation.  I was a freshman theatre student once upon the '90s, and I know how fragile the adolescent ego can be.  Roger Ebert has the advantage of critiquing actors who've completed their training and earned millions of dollars for their work.  I do not.  I'm reviewing the efforts of 18-year-old beginners, so I'm obliged to strike a balance between negative but constructive criticism and timid palliation.  My aim will be to err slightly on the side of kindness.

Of the 23 actors in the cast, at least a handful showed real promise, so I can offer warm encouragement to Kelsey Preston, mesmerizingly self-loathing as "Woman Stand-Up;" Noah Lundquist, drawling through a parody of Laura from The Glass Menagerie; Jeanine Kuehn, bellowing for control of "The Actor's Nightmare;" and Preston Crawford and Zach Holstine as "The Hardy Boys."  If only the overall production had offered them better support.  I learned a euphemism from Stephen King's Under the Dome that's appropriate here:  "clustermug."

The intermission, for example, was scheduled for 10 minutes.  Friday, it was more like two.  I wondered if this was a ploy to disorient the audience, but if so, it was a too-clever move that stranded patrons in the restroom.  In Act II, a technician hung from the light booth like an Audio-Animatronic pirate through much of "1-900-Desperate."  A pointlessly ribald musical intro to "Phyllis and Xenobia" was downright embarrassing.  Saddest of all, Durang/Durang was written to parody 1980s Broadway, a time before any of these students were born - so their ignorance of playwrights like Sam Shepard, while understandable, erased the central joke of the anthology.  I question the choice of this material for a freshman class of acting and directing students, as they had little chance of getting the joke - and it wasn't their fault.

I find it sadly germane that several of these pieces were grabbed from a 1996 collection called A Mess of Plays by Chris Durang; as, for most of Friday night's performance, that's exactly what I watched being made.

[South Puget Sound Community College - Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts, Durang/Durang, through March 7, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $12.50, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW, Olympia, 360.596.5411]