BWW Reviews: DATING: ADULTS EMBRACING FAILURE Proves Even Heartbreak Can Be Hilarious!

Los Angeles-based comedic writers and performers Josh Lanzet and Lindy Voeltner met performing comedy at The Second City in Chicago. While developing a scene together about relationships, its popularity encouraged them to work it into a full show now entitled DATING: ADULTS EMBRACING FAILURE. Grab your friends and be prepared to laugh as you recognize yourselves in the many hilarious vignettes about how love is found and lost in the most ordinary or extraordinary of places and circumstances.

To get you ready for the dating mishaps you are about to witness, when you arrive at the box office you will be asked to fill out a slip of paper with your best pick-up or break-up line, several of which are shared at the end of the show with the audience's favorite earning the writer a show t-shirt. It was fun to discuss which of our best lines to share, an activity which opened my eyes about how men and women attempt to get the attention of each other when they first meet. And it got us both in the mood for the laughs ahead.

The fast-paced 60-minute comedy written and performed by Josh Lanzet and Lindy Voeltner is a hilarious and thoughtful take on what makes a relationship succeed or fail. Featured among the many vignettes are eight eclectic couples as they discover if they have the right chemistry to make a match that lasts. Each actor plays all the parts, changing characters with the simplest of costumes pieces and different placement of several chairs to represent the many locations.

Lanzet and Voeltner create such individualized personas, it is easy to follow which pair is brought back again and again to share their further exploits as they ride the roller coaster of love. But you will begin to wonder how any of these pairs can possibly succeed given their insecurities or just plain personality disorders. Sound familiar?

We watch and repeatedly laugh at some great lines shared between two retirees meeting on a park bench as one tries to solve a crossword puzzle with the other helping out as she feeds popcorn to the birds, a young woman rushing for the train who stops to listen and then joins in with a sincere guitar player, two stressed-out people waiting in a coffee shop line who discover after arguing about who gets to place their order first that they have ordered the same drink, a pair of co-workers ordering lunch who realize their real interest in each other, a couple waking up in bed who argue over which alarm is best, an engaged couple discussing their wedding plans when she suddenly realizes her designer-loving groom-to-be is gay, a first date going incredibly downhill at a French restaurant, and a wild and crazy couple meeting on the dance floor.

With one unexpected couple emerging intact through it all, this punchy new comedy will leave you crying with laughter and looking for your own recipe for a successful relationship, if such a thing can even be hoped for or planned in our crazy modern world. If anything, this show will convince everyone we are not alone in our many successes and failures, and encourage us to just keep trying - and laughing - at our own foibles along the way to happiness.

The DATING: ADULTS EMBRACING FAILURE West Coast premiere took place at this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival at which it won an Encore Award, earning it an extension at The Hudson Guild Theatre (6539 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, 90038), July 16 through September 3 on Thursday nights at 8 PM. Tickets are $20 and available at www.plays411.com/dating. For more, go to www.adultsembracingfailure.com.

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