​W​hat the show emphatically is not is a showcase for actresses Priscilla Barnes and Diane Civita (Cary). In Ara Watson and Mary Gallagher's "Little Miss Fresno," they play two mothers rooting for their daughters in a beauty contest for tots. For one (Cary), this is a weekend's diversion; for the other (Barnes), this is war. When good performers inhabit familiar characters like these, they end up looking not so familiar.  ​​​"The finest quality that one-act plays can project is the sense that we're glimpsing only one scene in a much longer story. "Win/Lose/Draw" reveals such authority legerdemain in not one but all three of its one-acts at the Skylight Theatre. ​​

 

Watson's "Final Placement" allows the actresses to switch roles in the power struggle: Now Civita (Cary) is the one in charge (at a child welfare office), while Barnes creates an intricately detailed portrait of a wasted young woman who seriously abused her child. The mother wants her child back, but she doesn't even have a chance at gaining visitation rights. By artful suggestion and avoidance of melodrama, Watson, Barnes and Civita (Cary) show that justice can be enjoined with sadness.​

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In Gallagher's "Chocolate Cake," Barnes and Civita (Cary) play women full of softly comic vulnerability, often reminiscent of Lanford Wilson characters. Jim Kenney's set and Kathy Perkins' lights create a teasingly puzzling opening that only in retrospect is naturalistic.

 

Civita's tough New York woman and Barnes' sweet-hearted small-town wife never clash as we'd expect. The drama is in how they open up to each other about their needs--gastronomic and other. Dorothy Lyman's directorial hand is so good, it's almost invisible."​

 

-LA TIMES (Robert Koehler)