LOVE SPRINGS LAUGHS AT THE PLANET ANT

Do yourselves a favor and catch the double bill at the Planet Ant in Hamtramck called “Love Springs Laughs.”

The Perfect Solution by Kim Carney is touching and sweet and funny, and One Man’s Truth by Joe Zettelmaier that ends the evening is down and dirty and funny, funny, funny. My friend and I laughed all through the show, through the obligatory post-performance actor-hugging, into the car, all the way to the Cass Café and until the drinks arrived. It’s the funniest show I’ve seen since The Odd Couple forty years ago and the first act of Albee’s The Goat (featuring sex-with-a-goat jokes by the carload). Zettelmaier's humor is a delightful mix of sophisticated and childish, as if the guy in your junior high who told everybody dirty jokes had suddenly taken up reading Updike, and Roth.

The actors (alphabetically Patrick O'Connor Cronin, Jaime Moyer, Beth Ann Thibault, Brian Thibault, and Jackie Strez) played their characters earnestly and honestly as befits comedy high and low; the direction (by Nancy Kammer and Shannon Ferrante) was crisp, clean, peppy, and imaginative, and the stage craft was perfectly suited to the shows and the space.

For fifteen bucks (and maybe a discount on Friday or Sunday) it’s a cheap and glorious high. The show continues through May 16.