It isn't often that you find a Harold Pinter play about torture and a Christopher Durang comedy about a saucy, slinkily feline waitress on the same bill.

But at City Theatre's annual Summer Shorts Festival, thematic and stylistic variety is what gets both the artists and the audiences jazzed. Strong or weak, puzzling or inspired, a Summer Shorts bill is never boring.

The Pinter and the Durang? They're the two closing pieces on the company's Signature Shorts program this year, so different that watching them could give you aesthetic whiplash.

Kicking off its 14th Summer Shorts fest at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts over the weekend, the company has tightened its artistic belt a bit, shrinking Signature Shorts from two programs to an eight-play, 90-minute experience.

Stephen Trovillion, aka ''Mr. Summer Shorts'' and an actor who can convulse an audience with a fleeting wink, is back to anchor the acting company. Shorts veterans Laura Turnbull, Elena Maria Garcia, Erin Joy Schmidt and David Hemphill have returned too. Stephen G. Anthony and John Manzelli, veteran South Florida actors, are this year's new guys.

It's a company full of inventive artistry, experience and versatility, and both the actors and directors make it easy to believe the short comedies and little dramas wouldn't be nearly as engaging without their illuminating (and sometimes flaw-obscuring) skills.

Garcia and Anthony kick things off with C.S. Hanson's Falutin, a comedy about musicians who like to jump-start their second-half performances by jumping each other during intermission. They're at odds this time, though: The snooty flautist wants to keep going with sexually stimulating role-playing, while the trombonist has a single more permanent role in mind. Will it be cacophony or harmony for the orchestral odd couple?

Michael McKeever's Cravin Tutweiler (The Real Life Story of) is a neat, bawdy little comedy written for the most recent 24-Hour Theatre Project. Three truly different women -- a judgmental Republican businesswoman (Turnbull), a performance artist (Garcia) and a space-cadet heiress (Schmidt) -- recount their relationships with the same guy, the charismatic Craven (Trovillion). Given to playing Pygmalion, Craven moved on once he judged his beloved a more fulfilled woman. And though the three adored him, their issues with each other make for one funny cat fight.

Andrew Rosendorf's riveting Orlah abruptly shifts the program's tone. Artfully directed by Avi Hoffman, the play demonstrates just how potent a brief drama can be. Set in Spain during the Inquisition, Orlah focuses on Jewish parents (Manzelli and Schmidt) whose last desperate actions are to honor tradition and make sure their newborn boy is safe from the soldiers massing outside their door.

Gary Garrison's Storm on Storm at first seems to be a sitcom-style running argument between an unhappy wife (Turnbull) and her put-upon hubby, a New Jersey lawn furniture salesman (Trovillion) who has somehow turned into a human lightning rod. But the playwright, actors and director Gail Garrisan take the couple on a quick journey to deeper truths and, just maybe, a new beginning born from an old passion.

The three men drifting in a life boat in Brendan Andolsek Bradley's Jettison are ravenous and desperate. All too soon, we're feeling the latter, despite the efforts of Trovillion, Manzelli, Hemphill and director Gordon McConnell to make a play involving human and animal death funny.

Adam Szymkowicz's Snow is an odd yet engaging comedy about the longing for connection. Set in a wintry Manhattan, it features a delivery guy (Manzelli) who'd like to score with the barmaid (Schmidt) at his neighborhood tavern. She likes him, she says, but not in that way. Another customer (Anthony) is an obsessive-compulsive clean freak who has blown his chance at passion with an agoraphobic (Turnbull), their psychological shackles making love pretty much impossible. Still, all four dream.

Pinter's 1991 play The New World Order features a silent, blindfolded, quaking man (Hemphill) being verbally tortured by a pair of men whose words might as well be knives. Des (Trovillion) is the more intellectual and cunning of the two; Lionel (Anthony), ever a second away from physical violence, loves his work so much that it literally makes him cry. Under Stuart Meltzer's direction, Trovillion and Anthony handle Pinter's razor-sharp dialogue so artfully that you wish some South Florida theater would mount a full-length Pinter play and cast the two in it.

Durang's Kitty the Waitress, the 1997 piece that closes Signature Shorts, is an excuse for the mad-talented Garcia to show off her bottomless bag of physical comedy tricks. Trovillion, whose own comedic talents (riotously demonstrated in several Paul Rudnick plays during Summer Shorts past) are put on mute in this one, plays a none-too-happy tourist being served by the world's most aggravating or (if you see it differently) amusing waitress. I vote for ''aggravating,'' no disrespect to the very funny Garcia. Give me Trovillion in a sheep costume any day.

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