When creating his season, Dezart Performs Artistic Director Michael Shaw always reaches for top shelf ingredients, but he’s mixed up a delicious cocktail of woke hilarity in Larissa Fasthorse’s marvelous The Thanksgiving Play.
First of all I want to say, this is a very good production of Hand To God at a very good theater company, and if you've never seen the play you should absolutely go.
Coachella Valley Repertory closes its 2022-2023 Season with the irreverent and hilarious five-time Tony®Award nominee and winner of Best New Play HAND TO GOD by Robert Askin. The NY Times called HAND TO GOD a 'darkly delightful play.' Audiences will laugh and, perhaps, wonder if they shouldn't be quite so totally entertained. It is truly a wild and wonderful ride! HAND TO GOD OPENS runs March 28-April 9. Craig Wells returns to CVRep to direct, set design is by Jimmy Cuomo, costumes by Emma Bibo, lighting design by Moira Wilke and the stage manager is John M. Galo. Puppets are by Ryan Marquart and Thomas Mitchell.
Back in 2007 a little Searchlight film called Once entered my world with a big bang. Although it was not the first Irish musical film about unknown musicians (The Commitments was my first) it made a big impact on me in the same way Everything Everywhere All At Once did - it felt like a new genre of film and instantly became a favorite of mine. Especially the song Falling Slowly, which everyone seems to know. Not so much? The film. When I expressed my excitement over seeing the musical I was hella surprised to learn that most everyone I knew did not know this film.
HAND TO GOD, Robert Askin's irreverent and hilarious five-time Tony Award nominee and winner of Best New Play, opens at Coachella Valley Repertory in an all new production March 28-April 9.
The latest standings as of Monday, December 19th, have been released for the 2022 BroadwayWorld Palm Springs Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favorites.
The latest standings as of Monday, December 12th, have been released for the 2022 BroadwayWorld Palm Springs Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favorites.
This play is a very personal, journey that’s ironically relatable. It is disquieting, to its core it's more than disturbing, yet it is often hilarious, and while much of the information we learn is not light-hearted - the musical is joyous and full of laughs until it splits you in two.
The latest standings as of Monday, December 5th, have been released for the 2022 BroadwayWorld Palm Springs Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favorites.
Like love, fear is specific to each human. Monsters under the bed; the Bogeyman; things that go bump in the night; losing your mind; losing it all - Stephen Karam's The Humans collects all of our fears and deposits them all into one play, The Humans. A 2016 review in The New York Times called it 'The finest new play of the Broadway season so far - by a long shot.' What they don't say is, 'this play is dysfunctional and weirdly different.'
The last play of CVRep's 2021/2022 season, Native Gardens by playwright Karen Zacarias begins with all of the best intentions, but with change comes a perceived as well as a real cost. It is a slow grower, but the penultimate moment is well worth the burn.
I was fortune to be able to see the last production Ron Celona will direct in his role as artistic director at CVRep. He's once again delivered top-notch entertainment in the form of Closer Than Ever.
Post-world-war-two America somehow managed to erase what 1920s women had fought so hard to create, and what the war effort at home had literally proved, that women could just as easily do a man's job. During the war, women were working in factories, becoming mechanics, if it was a 'man's job' women were out there doing it while the men fought the war. When the men came home, somehow women said hurrah! and happily became housewives and mothers. 'Whew! So glad to be back where I belong!' every magazine, billboard, and family-centric television show seemed to say, characterizing women as happy homemakers whose identity was determined by her biology aka her ability to keep a man happy in bed while producing babies, and all of the domesticity that implies.
Many years ago, I was having drinks with a married couple who were my two best friends. They both greeted me with warm hugs, and then he ran out to the store for cigarettes. She had a pitcher of homemade margaritas, and suggested we enjoy them on the back patio. We'd just settled in, and were looking out on her beautiful garden when she quietly said, 'He wants a divorce.' I was shocked and confused, and my reaction surprised even me. I threw up. My mind was trying to figure out how this had happened - they'd worked so hard to be together, he'd talked her into marriage just a few years prior after being together for over ten years; I just didn't see this coming, and neither did she. In the end, she fared much better than I did; she went on a couple of dating sites, met a new guy and they're crazy in love. I don't think I ever got over it. And that's pretty much what Donald Margulies Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends explores.