For the third year in a row, Eastenders Repertory Company greets the fall in San Francisco with a festival of short plays. In 2001, the company recognizes the need for levity with One Hundred and Six Years of Comedy, which features works by the great comic playwrights from George Bernard Shaw, Georges Feydeau and Noel Coward to Tom Stoppard, Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang.

Although drawn almost entirely from the 20th Century, One Hundred and Six Years of Comedy travels from France to England to Italy to America, with each cultures' sense of humor bringing a variety of styles to the stage. The short works are Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres' Mixed Doubles (C'est une femme du monde), Shaw's Overruled, Coward's Early Morning (or Sorry You've Been Troubled) (from London's Calling!), Moss Hart's Franklin D. Roosevelt to Be Inaugurated Tomorrow (from As Thousands Cheer), George S. Kaufman's Local Boy Makes Good, Dario Fo's Women Undressed and Bosdies to Be Dispatched (I cadaveri si spediscono, le donne si spogliano), Eugene Ionesco's Frenzy for Two, or More (Delire a deux), Stoppard and Clive Exton's The Boundary, Wasserstein and Durang's Medea and Tony Kushner's Reverse Transcription.

The comedies will be presented in three series. A includes the Feydeau Desvallieres, Shaw, Coward and Hart; B, the Kaufman, Fo and Ionesco and series C, the Stoppard-Exton, Wasserstein-Durang and Kushner.

Directing the plays are ERC artistic director Susan E. Evans, ERC's founding artistic director Charles E. Polly (author of The Twyla Trilogy), Don Speziale, Thomas Lynch, Kiara Downey and Debbie Lynn Carriger.

Tickets are $12-$15. The Eureka Theatre Company is located at 215 Jackson Street. For reservations, call (510) 434-0734. — By Christine Ehren