Jason Mannino

NEW PLAY ELLIE SHOWS ITS UNDERBELLY Desert Ensemble Theater (DET) is one of the boldest and few Coachella Valley companies committed to creating new work and producing envelope-pushing plays. At the end of DET’s current season — it’s thirteenth — DET  executive director  Shawn Abramowitz and artistic director  Jerome Elliott Moskowitz will have commendably produced fourteen world premieres….

A CASE OF GREAT THEATER It is rare to see intimate, loving friendships between straight and gay men both in life and on stage. In A Case for the Existence of God, running at Dezart Performs through March 10, playwright Samuel D. Hunter masterfully crafts a narrative that defies stereotypes and societal norms, portraying a…

ALTERNATIVE FACTS This past weekend Desert Ensemble Theater kicked off 2024 with The Lifespan of a Fact, a poignant and funny play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Jordan Farrell. Based on a book by Jim Fingal and John D’Agata, who detailed their personal experience preparing a magazine essay for publication in 2003, the play’s…

HEARTBREAK AND HILARITY IN FULL DISPLAY Palm Canyon Theater has launched into 2024 with a revival of Del Shores’ uproarious and heartfelt Sordid Lives. The playwright himself introduced the show on Saturday evening, graciously acknowledging Palm Springs and recognizing the city’s integral role in the tremendous success of both the play and the movie adaptation….

WHAT A GREAT SHOW CAN MEAN TO YOU Dezart Performs kicked off 2024 this past Friday with a compelling production of Heidi Schreck‘s What the Constitution Means to Me. When I saw the direct-from-Broadway production at Mark Taper Forum in 2020 it stood as a profoundly relevant tour de force. Astonishingly, since then, we have…

IT IS, INDEED, ONLY A PLAY; IT’S THE ENSEMBLE THAT MAKES IT MORE The Bent, in partnership with the Palm Springs Cultural Center, runs Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play for its final weekend this Thursday through Saturday. Go see it. The play unfolds on the opening night celebration for the Broadway premiere of Peter…

IS THIS ENSEMBLE GREAT? YOU BETTIE BELIEVE IT Desert Ensemble Theater (DET) launched its 23/24 season tonight, November 10, with Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, a play so provocative that some publications won’t publish its full title: Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties; In Essence, A Queer and Occasionally Hazardous Exploration; Do…

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS Dezarts Performs (Dezarts) has opened their new season with a fine production of Larissa Fasthorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, which runs just two weekends, ending this Sunday, November 12. The Thanksgiving Play had its world premiere in 2018. As of April, 2023 it is the only Native American play written by a…

GOES WRONG GOES RIGHT The Play That Goes Wrong running through Sunday, April 30 at Desert Theater Works (DTW) in Indio is the only comedy to ever win both a Tony and Olivier award. It is a hilarious, farcical masterpiece of human and technical stage malfunction — by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields…