Review: Women's Theatre Festival's PARALLEL LIVES Delivers Enough Knee-Slapping Moments of Hilarity to Be Worthy of a Night Out

According to Mo Gaffney, she and Kathy Najimy still think they are the funniest people on the planet. And if the play PARALLEL LIVES is any indication, they just might be.

Najimy and Gaffney (better known as Kathy and Mo) first performed PARALLEL LIVES, a series of comedy sketches they penned about women, in 1983 at The Old Town Theatre in San Diego. Six years later, they opened the show off-Broadway and in 1991, PARALLEL LIVES became an HBO special.

PARALLEL LIVES opens this weekend at Burning Coal Theatre as part of The Women's Theatre Festival. In this production, the roles originated by Gaffney and Najimy are being played by the Keith Liles and Emily Levinstone.

The chemistry between Levinstone and Liles is unmistakable, and they tackle Kathy and Mo's multiple characters with unyielding exuberance and certitude. And even though the repartee between them produces moments of knee-slapping hilarity, both women can also hold their own as solo performers and comediennes.

It is evident that this is a passion product for director Judy Long, who has smartly updated some of the material by sprinkling present-day references to Twitter, Adele, Hamilton, and even Tide Pods into the dialogue. Long has also worked with the LGBTQ Center of Raleigh to ensure references to gender identity are current.

While there is no through-line to PARALLEL LIVES per se, the common thread that ties these sketches together is one of acceptance and fundamental human rights, strikingly contemporary and relevant themes for a piece first performed over 30 years ago. And although some of the sketches work better than others, and the play runs long at just over two hours, there is enough thought-provoking funny material to make PARALLEL LIVES worthy of a girl's, err should I say women's, night out.

PARALLEL LIVES runs through July 7th at Burning Coal Theatre as part of the Women's Theatre Festival's mainstage series. For more information visit:

https://www.womenstheatrefestival.com/paraell-lives

Photo by Proctor Photographics.

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