In the past, producer Amber Kelly has brought us site-specific plays that have taken place in a van, a motel room and a derelict cabin. So to ask an audience to wander about Cranston's Artists' Exchange following the action of her latest effort seemed downright conventional.

This time, Kelly's Theatre of Thought is tackling three short plays by Terrence McNally spread out over three different spaces. Up first is "Next," a half-hour two-hander that finds a 40-year-old draftee being examined by a no-nonsense female officer. He tries to explain why all this is probably a big mistake, how he has a lot of things wrong with him, and how he definitely doesn't want to strip. But the sergeant just keeps peppering him with questions.

Folks who turn out for the show are handed a medical form to fill out, and then asked to sit in the waiting room, a space off to the side of the main theater. Soon the examining officer, played by Leann Heath, enters and calls, "Next." Up jumps Mark Carter, the reluctant recruit.

What follows is a war of wills that takes place in the "waiting room," with Heath ending up on the winning side. She's tough as nails, and Carter is a pushover, even though he launches into a wild rant at the end of his exam. He believes he's flunked and wants his blood and urine back.

The play makes some stabs at humor, but is a little flat. The idea behind it makes for a clever exercise in playwriting, though.

The second play, "Sweet Eros," is the boldest of the three and has apparently stirred up something of a controversy, because of some discreet nudity. Thursday, the Artists' Exchange sent out an e-mail stating that it has nothing to do with the content of the plays and that Theater of Thought is acting on its own.

For this play, right after "Next," Carter leads the audience into a basement room with a kitchen. This is supposed to be the rural retreat where an ex-teacher has brought a woman, bound and gagged, against her will and stripped her naked. But the woman in question, Kira Neel, is not facing the audience, so all you see is her bare back.

Bobby Casey plays the kidnapper, who spends most of this time telling Neel his life story, tales of his two wives or "women," and how people by and large "don't like to be loved." Gradually, we get to see what makes this psycho tick.

The evening ends with a short one-act play that has Tom Chace giving something of a rambling history of 1960s theater, when actors confronted audiences, and how all that has changed. Chace plays a switchblade-toting tough who has his amusing moments, but otherwise plays things pretty straight.

This, of course, is intimate theater. You sit just a few feet from the actors in some cases, and feel like you are part of the action. But these are also pretty cramped spaces that don't allow for many spectators. There are only a handful of chairs in the room with the kitchen, along with a mattress and a blanket.

Still, the acting is solid and there is some pretty interesting material at hand, especially in "Sweet Eros," which is the most dramatic of the three.

The McNally plays open Friday and run through Feb. 13 at the Artists' Exchange, 50 Rolfe Square, Cranston. Tickets are $18 cash at the door. Due to limited seating, reservations are recommended. E-mail: reservations@theaterofthought.com.