←Recommendations of DREAM HOUSE

"How capable am I of great evil?" you might ask after catching this darkly amusing play. What would it take? Someone killing your dream? The cruelties of the market? The promise of money? How about the guarantee the people you harm are confined to a screen? They can't feel, after all. Monsters lose their humanity one way or another, so it's fine to enact your violences... right? We can all snap. We can all kill. And we'll do it while calling ourselves good. Isn't that delightfully horrifying?

When DIYers David and Chloe dive headfirst into a house-rental program without sound legal advice, they invite greedy malevolence into their perfect dream world. Everything that follows is the nightmarishly logical consequence of their big miscalculation. But David's Choice, capitalized, at the halfway point, will have even bigger consequences for a marriage that was based on openness and sharing. This is one doomed couple.

Having experienced a similar scenario first hand (though thankfully not the same resolution!) I totally appreciated Cole's escalation of the events in this tightly drawn drama. Brava, playwright!

The many layers in this play are horrifying, revealing corruption on top of corruption, and exposing the predatory landscape under late capitalism. The conflict is truly very complex, making it difficult to choose someone to root for in this convoluted nightmare scenario! I appreciate the moral that predatory systems beget predators, and breaking cycles is far more complex than simply defeating one corrupt individual. I also appreciated the cyclical structure, which hammered the moral home.

What a horrifying scenario for ANYONE to go through. Deb Cole’s Dream House is anything but in this tale of a couple losing their home, their rights, and quite possibly their scruples. Being driven to ever escalating heights of desperation, we see in frustrating detail as the couple are preyed upon by a man who knows just how to manipulate the law for his own despicable behavior. The loss of personal power is maddening and Cole pulls no punches here. I was both thrilled and appalled to see their solution, but really, could you blame them? Riveting theater.

BOOM! This squirmy domestic drama packs a punch and has several twists and turns you won't see coming. Deb Cole's DREAM HOUSE stages a modern homeowner's worst nightmare and accomplishes a feat I once thought impossible: it got me to side with a landlord! The characters are sharply drawn and are a treat for actors, readers, and audiences alike - produce this play!!

Truly horrifying in its scope of probability, audiences will easily empathize with the emotional hellscape Debra A. Cole has created in "Dream House." A real-life Freddy Krueger (Rob) terrorizes suburbia armed with squatters rights and infuriating audacity in this modern daymare, putting a young couple's marriage and morals in question. Cole masterfully unveils a "What Would You Do?" scenario for us that both entertains and educates, hopefully saving any would-be renters from such a fate in the process. FABULOUS!

Well, that escalated quickly.

What starts out as a sweet tale of a young couple struggling to afford their dream home morphs seamlessly into a horror story in Debra A. Cole's compelling and ultimately twisted play. I don't want to say too much about the plot, but this is a play that would be easy to stage and would give audiences something to ponder and discuss long after the lights went down. I had a blast reading this play.

Bone-chilling. In a moment of weakness, while under extreme duress, a husband's deeply buried character flaw catapults to the surface and has inexorable consequences. Set against the backdrop of an incredibly compelling moral dilemma, this well-crafted descent finishes with a heart-pounding 15 minutes. Produce this play!

Yikes! I thought I was reading a cute rom-com until I wasn't. Deb Cole's DREAM HOUSE will evoke many emotions (mainly anger and frustration) while leaving us questioning our concept of justifiable action when unintended consequences of a poorly-written law allow continued harm to the victimized. I rarely get angry about anything, but Deb has crafted a scenario that provides such a wholly unredeemable and dastardly character that I was actually swearing out loud (SOL?) at my computer screen. If this play was staged in the 1800's, some poor actor wouldn't make it out of the theatre alive. Well done.