←Recommendations of Lombardo

A fantastic biopic play that is both interesting and just a great deal of fun!

I had the good fortune to see this when it was produced by the Fine Arts Association. A delightfully meta sendup of the biopic genre.

It's hilarious, snappy, and charmingly meta. It turns its own genre on its head, taking biographic metatheatre and the weird pseudoexpositional dialect it speaks in and making a brazen mockery of that. "Three actors" killed me.

Being of an age where I remember Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians on TV on New Year's Eve, I had a hard time at the start remembering that this is parody. That's the way it should be. David Hansen's skill at making me believe in his reality is perfectly suited for this material, and those who never heard of Mr. Lombardo will get a good look at how to write a seamless satire that brings you right in and holds you.

One of the funniest and meta-ist "miniature biographies" I've ever encountered, what makes this piece stand out is just how much information and pointed, spot-on satire is packed into its ten-minute playing time; every joke, every societal comment, every anachronism lands squarely on its intended target, and the laughter is explosive. A playground for gifted actors, "Lombardo" should be a new New Year's Eve tradition.

This is a hilarious look at Lombardo’s life. Love the meta-theatre exploration of playwriting dramaturgy that won’t alienate an audience, but rather bring them into the joke. I bet this would be hilarious to see. I could think of a thousand actresses that would kill in the role of Lilliebell. Smart, economical, inventive, and lots of fun. Happy New Year.

Read this play twice. Hansen has written a wry parody of biographical plays and their limitations. And playwrights' and historians' limitations. Kudos on Lilliebell Lombardo's outcry, too -- the most genuine and emotional moment in this short play.

Lombardo, in ten pages, finds a way to be ABOUT the holiday of New Year's Eve while still being funny and giving actors a wonderful playground to run in. A fun, quick party of a script.

As I read this I imagined actors performing this in a rapid-fire Capra-esque style of movies from the 30's and 40's. With anachronistic dialogue flying, David Hanson's Lombardo is a fun piece of whimsy, and I hope someone decides to produce it again.