Vengeance

DEATH BECOMES HER Joyce, right, faces down a gun.

A thematic quintet of playlets produced by the new company StageFARM, Vengeance has its pleasures: brevity, variety and shoestring-but-effective production values. But the main element that deserves attention is ensemble member Lisa Joyce, a haunting, deeply empathetic young actor who ought to be constantly employed before Hollywood steals her. The petite performer with soft, youthful features, doe eyes and a warm, faintly husky voice was seen in 2006 as the tragic prostitute Christina in Adam Rapp’s Red Light Winter. Here, Joyce gets to display a greater range of comedy and drama.

Luckily, she’s in good company: Carrie Shaltz, David Wilson Barnes, Michael Mosely and David Ross all get chances to shine. As the title suggests, each play in this revue deals with characters meting out revenge or justice. The most effective balance comedy and thrills, like Gina Gionfriddo’s Squalor, in which an overzealous cop (Shaltz) and a depressive loser (Barnes) work to trap an online pedophile (Ross). Julian Sheppard’s gooseflesh-raiser Skin & Bones suggests a dystopian future with terrorists who use corpses to smuggle bombs (I think). Joyce appears as a very pregnant and judgmental sister locking horns with irresponsible sibling Shaltz in Francine Volpe’s short, shocking Giftbox. But she gets to really strut her stuff in Nina Beeber’s surreal docudrama Specter. Punning on the name of its subject, legendary record producer Phil Spector, the piece examines his alleged 2003 murder of nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson (he goes to retrial next year). As the ghost haunting Spector (creepily incarnated by Barnes), Joyce is heartbreakingly perky and pathetic, yet somehow triumphal. Revenge may be best served cold, but this dish is piping hot.

—By David Cote