The Tucson Art Theatre Performs Two One-Act Plays By A Texas Treasure. By Margaret Regan IT'S TEXAS IN the 1920s, and times are changing. Small-town folks are streaming out of the bone-dry countryside into big cities like Houston. Suddenly, instead of saying howdy to everybody on the street, they're living among strangers. The city is so big they have to take streetcars to get where they're going. But some things stay just the same. Housewives enjoy a morning chat over coffee, the Baptist Church reigns comfortably supreme over all other comers (though there are gasp! some Episcopalians and Catholics in the metropolis), and no one has the faintest idea how to treat a young woman with advancing mental illness. This is the world of Horton Foote's A Nightingale, beautifully brought to life by the Tucson Art Theatre in a new production of two one-acts. (The second play is Foote's The One-Armed Man.) This fine small company, absent from Old Pueblo stages for the last year, has made a specialty of performing plays by Foote. An octogenarian Texan screenwriter and playwright who counts last year's Pulitzer Prize among a lifetime of accolades, Foote writes deceptively simple tales of family life and loss. In some admiring quarters, he's known as America's Chekhov. Annie Gayle Long, a heartbreaking character who appears in more than one Foote play, is the nightingale, the disturbed young woman adrift in the big city. Poignantly rendered by company member AnnaMarie Greenwood, who also directed both plays, Annie has a diminishing grasp of reality. Every morning she travels clear across Houston by streetcar to take refuge in the kitchen of Mabel, another exile from small-town Harrison. Though Annie struggles to recite what's expected on such occasions, an innocent litany of gossip from home, the bitter memory of her father's murder years ago continually intrudes. "Pow! pow! pow!" she bursts out, again and again, right in the middle of one or another hometown anecdote. She embarrasses herself by not remembering where her children are, or even what they're named. She insists, inexplicably, that her husband (David Greenwood) is a Catholic priest. Annie knows full well she's tumbling irretrievably into madness, and she obediently tries to paper over that horror by doing what the well-meaning people around her tell her to do. The compassionate Mabel (Esther Blue-Almazan) urges her to read the Lord's Prayer whenever she "gets nervous." Annie's anxious husband, whom even she calls Mr. Long, tells her to stay home and behave. Mabel's neighbor, Vonnie, is wonderfully played by Cynthia Meier as a genial woman who nevertheless looks on Annie's shenanigans with purse-lipped dismay. Vonnie seems to think that if the Baptist Church can't do the job, going to the picture show would cure this and any other evil. There's a similar mentality at work in the second play. A black worker has lost an arm in an accident at the cotton gin back in small-town Harrison (Foote nearly always situates his plays in this fictional stand-in for his hometown of Wharton). Summarily fired, Ned keeps coming back to the office to demand his arm back. No one addresses his despair directly. In Annie's case, those who care about her try to cover over her desperation with soothing small talk. The thinking is that if they act normal, she'll become normal. Similarly, in Ned's case, the boss at first tries to ignore the catastrophe. Pressed, he decides to settle this little problem of the lost arm by sending Ned five dollars every week until Christmas. Harry Starks' unplacated Ned is a frightening figure of barely contained rage. David J. Kennedy is perfect as the fatuous boss who gloats over the inability of another low-ranking employee, Pinkey (David Greenwood again), to manage his scanty paycheck. Foote's main interest is the relations between people, and the festering tragedies that occasionally erupt in quiet lives, but he also deftly brings in the larger social world. In a few short strokes, he sketches the oppressive work environment of '20s Texas, unregulated and nonunion and downright dangerous to workers. (Greenwoood helps fill in the picture with a bit of acting shorthand, in the form of Pinkey's slope-shouldered posture and cringing gait.) And Mabel's kitchen clues us into the wider world of men and women. Though the city-bound women long for their extended families back home, they fret that their men will run off if they leave them unattended and uncooked-for too long. Mabel's unseen husband Jack has forbidden Annie to visit his wife anymore. Mabel wants to help, but, with Jack's ruling in force, there's little she can do when Annie's own husband arrives to carry her off. No question, the men are in charge. This serious playwright can also be funny, with hilarious anecdotes about a preacher running off with a married woman or solemn musings that Catholics probably also pray, popping up amidst the social disorder. His redolent language finds both the comedy and the poetry in everyday Southern speech. Tucson Art Theatre has wisely given his plays a minimalist treatment. The spare sets suggest a long-ago office and kitchen, and some country music played before each piece helps create a mood. But director Greenwood has drawn finely evocative portraits from her actors by relying most of all on Foote's own beautifully written texts. The Tucson Art Theatre continues its production of Horton Foote's A Nightingale and The One-Armed Man at 8 p.m. May 24, 25 and 26, at the Cabaret Theatre of the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. The show closes Sunday. Tickets, available at the door, are $8 general, $7 for senior citizens and students. For reservations call 327-7950.

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