←Recommendations of Paletas de Coco or, The Letter Unspoken or, The Christmas Eve Play

Most autobiographical solo pieces seek the audience's empathy and understanding by sharing history, perspective, and experience. Gonzalez seeks more: he wants his audience's collusion. Our help. Beyond being a memoir and an intimate dissection of familial (especially paternal) emotional inheritance, PALETAS DE COCO is an active search.

This is no metaphor.

We are helping Gonzales draw out an actual missing man who may or may not still be alive. In order to lure him, Gonzales lures us into the story of his family. We are witnesses, bait, and ultimately executors of his legacy. A profoundly moving, living, reaching document.

This play is honest. Open your diary and read honest. That honesty works. Watching it being performed felt like sitting with a friend or a family member. Each character, moment and scene was clearly painted with the words. If you are interested in an emotional experience that tugs at your heart, this play is it.

An intensely personal autobiographical story, the type of which I would never even dare to try to write. Daring and with a particular, creative theatricality and humor beyond its confessional one-person play trappings. I'm particularly interested in how this show changes from night to night with different people in the second role.

There are works you admire mainly for their artistry, and others that grab you by the gut for their searing honesty. "Paletas" falls into the second group, with its unsparing depiction of Franky Gonzalez's father as well as himself. Suicidal thoughts, extreme depression, and uncontrollable obesity dominate the first half. But there is humor too, especially in the account of the birth of Franky's son, and hope at the end when Franky pledges to become a better father to his son than his father was to him. It would be interesting to see what the "performer" adds to this monologue.

Where to even begin...This is not your average living room drama, no. “Paletas de Coco” by Franky Gonzalez is a father’s beating heart. It is a journey marked by a son’s worry stones. It is heartbreaking and vulnerable—hilarious and devastating—it will tear you apart with its honesty and put you back together again with hope and sunshine. In life we have so many moments that are not an “if” but a “when”—when this play makes its debut it is going to take over the world.

It's a challenge to be heartbreaking, unflinchingly candid, and uproariously funny all in the same play, but I swear this one achieves all three sometimes within a single moment. Yes, it's personal and achingly honest, but it's also flawlessly structured storytelling that delivers a whole lifetime of characters and struggles and triumphs in a single impossibly evocative ninety minute show. Anyone who's been a parent -- or had a parent -- will feel both seen and understood.

I, too, heard Franky's play in the quirky bookstore, Heirloom Books, somewhere in Chicago. In an intimate setting with friends and strangers, we re-lived Franky's life with all its pain and suffering. The most truthful play I've ever heard. I can't stop thinking about it and Franky. Along with the harrowing stories, there was such humor and laughter. This play needs to be heard and seen.

This is an important play. I had an opportunity to hear Franky Gonzalez read this play live, and it was one of the most powerful theatre experiences I've had. The pain at the center of Paletas de Coco is devastating. The honesty with which Gonzalez confronts that pain and tells his story is inspiring and harrowing. We all try to write truthfully, but few people ever succeed to this degree. I hope this play is produced everywhere. It really should be.

After the almost-unbelievable experience of hearing Franky read this play live, I'm here to amplify my previous recommendation and say that this writer is a treasure, and this play a gift, interweaving the painful threads of intergenerational trauma, into a beautiful tapestry of life, death and second chances. Thank you, Franky, for this.

Franky Gonzalez is a playwriting genius, and this play is a fearless, heartbreaking, inventive, intensely theatrical, gorgeous piece of work. It bruises, it blisters, it burns, and ultimately, it heals from the sheer courage of Gonzalez' riveting ability to bare his soul so openly and without pretense. Absolutely stunning.