Despite a few structural fumbles in the second act of Mark Rigney's 'Nightjars' and the occasional tendency to get knotted up in its own vehemence, the play is an engrossing, in-your-face theater piece. It's the third of three world premiere scripts on view at Northern Kentucky University's biennial Year End Series (Y.E.S.) new play festival.  

At a guess, neither playwright Damon DiMarco nor director Michael King meant for 'Shock & Awe: Soldiers' Voices from Iraq' to take stage as a laugh riot when, on Thursday night, it opened Northern Kentucky University's biennial Year End Series (Y.E.S.) new play festival. But it did.  

Actress/author/ambassador Clare Boothe Luce simply called Manhattan women of wealth "The Women" and said she wrote her acid-tongued 1936 comedy to get the scabrous bunch of them out of her mind. Blessed be university theaters with mobs of actresses who can tackle such scripts and succeed with them. What contemporary theater company could meet a payroll with 25 players in the cast?