←Recommendations of All The King's Horses

DeVita delivers a memory play of powerful proportions in this riveting work that holds us captive from start to finish. The all-female cast of characters take us twisting and turning through the realms of illusion and delusion to a finish that does what every great play should accomplish - make us feel a higher connection to the multi-faceted layers of human experience. Superb!

From the moment I read the synopsis of this piece I was intrigued. There are many 'standard' subjects that plays have been written about across time and this was the first time I'd seen one like this and it did not disappoint. The flitting between the various conversations and the use of humour in what is otherwise a very serious situation is brilliantly done. The development of the story and the way the characters portray it is very well done. The piece as a whole very successfully shines a light and is guaranteed to leave an audience thinking.

I am always struck with how effective a writer Doug DeVita is. He melds past and present events with equal vivid imagery, taking us from a court-mandated Psychotherapist's office to an unsettling world of egg-donors and highly suspect doctors preying on a young woman with an over abundance of fertile eggs and an under funded checking account. I was so intrigued by where this story took me, with its dark humor and even darker relationships. This play really should be staged, if only to shine a light on this subject matter. A very high recommendation from me!

Attention must be paid to this dissection of one American Dream as a eugenic consumerist nightmare. DeVita weaves together the lives of exploited Anna, an aspiring actress from Sweden and complex ever-shifting mosaic personality and Hella, a court-mandated therapist whose own background and tragedies eventually anchors an ordered retribution for both of them. Set in LA and inspired by a true story, with an all female cast and compelling characters, All the King’s Horses uses an innovative structure to create an original and disturbing vision of technology and human need in the 21st century.

DeVita has that rare ability to grab the reader at the first page. The opening lines of this piece are so assured and brimming with promise that I was immediately all in. Anna is another one of DeVita's indelible creations: confident, witty, living to the fullest with every breath, and deeply shattered at her core. The story has a fullness that doesn't seem capable of fitting into its lean 70 pages, yet it is all here and without an ounce of fat. I will never think of mermaids the same way again after a key monologue in this play.

An eye-opening look at the dark side of a medical industry I knew little about, this full-length brings into focus what drives the infertility business and the ways it preys on the vulnerable. I especially liked the play’s watercolor, dreamy nature - easy to stage with just some clever and creative lighting- methodically laid out in its 10 point structure representing the therapist’s POV. Bonus points for an all-woman cast about procreation where not one man is ever mentioned by name.

The mind can play tricks on us so well, sometimes for its own reasons, or sometimes trying to tell us something that leaves us trying to figure out just what it saying through scattered memories and feverish dreams. In this stream of dreams, memories, and sense-memory recall, Doug DeVita weaves tales of Anna seeking something, although we're not sure what; and neither is she. The pacing is fluid, like dreams and memories, and the roles are so well-crafted that any theatre that takes it on is going to be proud of their production.

Anna has everything: beauty, brains, talent and wit. Everything that is, except a mother's love. She thinks she finds it in the form of Eileen, who uses Anna's desperate need for connection to rob her of her fertility and eventually her health. Anna's story is slowly revealed to Hella in a series of court-mandated psychiatry sessions. It's a helluva good memory play with surprises around every turn, including the discovery of whose memories we're really seeing. It's also a tour de force for four women. Highly Recommended.

Doug DeVita spins a taut tale with this intriguing memory play. There are many complexities at work here, both within the story and for these characters, but we never get bogged down by them. The play moves fluidly back and forth through time as mysteries are revealed and we get drawn further into the lives of these characters. The play is riveting, like a good old-fashioned mystery you don’t want to put down. And best of all, this play offers five dynamic roles for women with its unique take on a controversial subject we don’t often see spotlighted.