Women obsess about their bodies, men worry about being manly in a pair of one-act plays staged with youthful passion by 6th Avenue Players at Theatre Ste. Catherine.

A new independent theatre company, 6th Avenue Players shows great promise, creating an illuminating "he said-she said" synergy with its dramatic double feature.

What may seem like an odd pairing of Edward Albee's 1960 two-hander The Zoo Story with a 1994 classic of feminist theatre, The Most Massive Woman Wins by New York author Madeleine George, turns out to be a great idea.

In The Zoo Story, director Liz Truchanowicz gives her actors, James Allport as bourgeois pillar Peter and Michael Longstaff as rooming-house Jerry, all the elbow room they need to fight their grim and deadly territorial battle - over a bench in Central Park.

The agile script (it marked Albee's stage debut) triumphs throughout, even when Allport and Longstaff try to shout it down when Peter and Jerry's manly duel clicks into emotional overdrive for a blood-curdling finish that has the playgoer wondering whether to applaud or dial 911.

The four women (age 17 to 39) in George's play have fat on their mind as they meet in the waiting room of a liposuction clinic. Ready to risk their lives to improve their looks, they trade horror stories and play girlish games.

Bonding exercises like skip-rope frame the soul-baring solos performed by Jessica Abdallah, Kim Doucet, Denise Paquet and Carolyn-Fe Trinidad, under Jesse Corbeil's lively direction.

The Zoo Story and The Most Massive Woman Wins, a 6th Avenue Players production, until Sunday at Theatre Ste. Catherine, 264 Ste. Catherine St. E. Call (514) 288-7212.

mradz@thegazette.canwest.com