Warren Leight found a nifty way to sum up 20 years’ worth of Knicks agony: In “Sec. 310, Row D, Seats 5 and 6,” the Tony-winning writer of “Side Man” — and longtime executive producer on “Law & Order: SVU” — tracks season-ticket holders through decades of personal and athletic turmoil. One goes through a divorce, another loses his mother. Through it all, the one reassuring constant is the basketball team’s everlasting mediocrity.
As directed by Fred Berner, this slight but well-crafted one-act play captures the banality of diminishing expectations — accompanied, as it so often is, by the hope that you can rebuild your life, and your team will be in the playoffs again.
Too bad the rest of “Summer Shorts (Series A)” isn’t on this level. (Series B starts July 26 and includes a piece by regular contributor Neil LaBute.) In Roger Hedden’s “The Sky and the Limit,” two dudes have a dude-like conversation about not very much while one of them lies injured after jumping off a cliff. Turns out it’s not enough to believe you can fly, even when you’re in your mid-20s and feeling invincible.
The weakest entry is Eric Lane’s “Riverbed,” in which a couple mourn the death of their young daughter. The story is told and directed (by Matthew Rauch) so flatly that you wonder why this was even staged, rather than written as a short story.
One good play out of three? At least it’s a stat the Knicks would kill for.