Short theater is great. It’s great for all sorts of reasons. First of all, if it sucks, it’s over quickly. Better, if it doesn’t suck, and if a short piece is put together with another short piece or two, you wind up with this lovely evening of traveling all over the map, enmeshed, if only briefly, in one world after another. Kind of like TV, but with class. Kind of like FronteraFest but… well, but nothing. Now through March 26th, Hyde Park Theatre is putting off nights to great use, featuring three festival hits from past fests (’98, ’06, and ’08). Start to finish, including an intermission, has you in by 8 and out by 9:15, plenty of time to stop by the Parlor across the street afterwards and have an animated discussion about the shorts.

The first piece, Port Arthur, written and directed by HPT artistic director Ken Webster, is a lovely, Texas-style cross between Sartre and Kids in the Hall, where a very small cast (two) in a very tight setting (bus seat), play out a very ancient theme (sort of David vs. Goliath). Larius Likler, the second piece, is slightly longer than Port Arthur, with a really strong cast of four. Seventeen year-old Austin High student Kayla Newman is an über-standout as Beluga aka Condom, the youngest of three children including her brother, who aspires to be a serial killer, and her reluctantly pregnant, wisecracking sister. Their runaway mom checks in via voice mail while dad has a hard time keeping things together.

Webster’s choice to run the third piece, Humans, last, is wise for a couple of reasons. It’s the longest of the three—around a half hour—and comes after an intermission. But more importantly, it’s as if the first two pieces—sliver of life moments in other people’s lives—prepare us for this final show in which six actresses (each really excellent in her own right) take the stage one by one and offer up one curiously absurd tale after another, not about themselves, but as narrators of other humans.

A lovely way to spend a weeknight, even more so as a little mental palate cleansing after all that damn music last week.