←Recommendations of PLEASE LAUGH

So funny and so uncomfortable. This parody of a late night show with a host who behaves badly and is indulged every step of the way will make you laugh and cringe. It's a great commentary on fame and the fame-adjacent, with a fantastic monologue about doing improv in college. I truly didn't know what was going to happen next from moment to moment as I feared for the women and tried to will Buddy to step up and step in. With engaging characters, a single set, and audience participation (but not in an uncomfortable way), this play is great.

A play committed to pure entertainment and engagement in the most sensational and deranged fashion. Absolutely steadfast in its mission of presenting a superbly heightened, yet overly familiar world of entertainment, making the audience a complicit participant in the mania of the story. Uncomfortable and gut-punching, and maybe one of the funniest treatises on the corruption of contemporary fame out there.

Hilarious! Scary! James Corden! A pop culture play that never feels #topical. Someone must stop these late-night psychos and Leiber just might be the person to do it. This play has a chaotic, unhinged, trickster energy. The funniest play I've read on this site by a wide margin.

The host, as with many such hosts i.r.l, has nothing funny to say himself, but his sheer audacity is horrifyingly hilarious (often a difficult line to toe, written masterfully here), and it drives everyone around him to similar extremes. Despite the host's gravity, the other characters are fully realized and genuinely funny. The more straightforward moments of hope and humor carry a lingering uneasiness with them; how long can it last? The journey the audience takes from standard interactions to game playing, to complicity, is fascinating and begs for a full production to see.

The best thing James Corden has ever been in, this is a really great talk show play