←Recommendations of The Wonderful Out There

There’s a moment a little over halfway in “The Wonderful Out There” that serves as the perfect display to this play’s crushing brilliance. A small moment in comparison to the play’s larger ones, a character forgets the name of his dog. I won’t say why or how it happens, but it has stuck with me since first seeing those words and I don’t see it leaving me anytime soon.

The same can be said for this entire play- it redefines and reimagines what theater is all while being harrowing, genius, heartfelt, and, simply put, incredible.

Beware of gingerbread houses.

This group home is like an inverted gingerbread house: perfect inside but getting out requires an honesty both unflinching and unfair. Especially to discarded children who’ve been through enough.

Bravely uncompromising, the play avoids being twee by showing its children at their most delightful and most taxing. We enjoy them AND get why their parents couldn’t hack it. Their caretaker Larry loves them as they are but his emotional paralysis - an agonized generosity and infinite despair – is heartbreaking.

This play enchants, soars, and devastates, in turns and ultimately all at once.