Zoey’s Perfect Wedding: Photo gallery

Photos from the first rehearsal of ‘Zoey’s Perfect Wedding’ on Dec. 20. To see more, click on the image above to be taken to the full photo gallery. The world-premiere comedy plays Jan. 19-Feb. 25 in the Space Theatre. Photos by John Moore for the DCPA NewsCenter.

Playwright Matthew Lopez’s newest comedy is about a wedding that goes horribly, horrifically wrong. As they do.

By John Moore
Senior Arts Journalist

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, the DCPA Theatre Company’s next world-premiere play, reunites playwright Matthew Lopez, author of The Whipping Man, with director Mike Donahue. The pair met in Denver in 2013 when they introduced Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride as part of the DCPA Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit. The play went on to have its full world-premiere staging at the Denver Center in 2014, followed by successful run Off-Broadway and subsequent productions around the country. “We met over a bagel in this very building,” Donahue said. “That play has been very important for both of us, and now Matthew is one of my closest friends.”

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding was inspired by a train wreck of a wedding Lopez found himself right in the middle of a few years after graduating from college. His play has old friends getting back together and when one friend begins to pick at a old scab, it leads to a full-scale (but funny!) verbal brawl. “This is a play about a group of people who at one point were really close friends,” said Donahue (pictured at right). “But now they are at a moment in time where they are just starting to realize that their friendships and their relationships and their marriages are not as alive and vital and necessary as they once were. One of the things the play looks at is: How do you negotiate the realization that your life isn’t where you thought it would be?” 

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding is at once Lopez’s newest — and one of his oldest — plays. “Yeah, this one is old enough to vote,” Lopez joked. He wrote it back in 2008, and now that the play is finally coming to stage life in 2017, Lopez and Donahue had a decision to make: Keep the time of the play in 2008, or update it to 2018. “2008 doesn’t seem like so many years ago,” Donahue said, “but we realized that it really was a very different moment in time. It feels to us like the consciousness of the country was in a very different place. That was not long after the stock-market crash, and soon after Obama was elected for the first time. A lot of us were realizing that for the first time as a nation, we were not economically invincible anymore. But also, coming so soon after the election, a lot of people had hope, both socially and politically. That’s where we were as a country, and that’s where this story lives. So we made the decision to let this play be a period piece. And I happen to think it is incredibly, raucously funny.” 

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding will be presented in the round in the Space Theatre, which poses significant challenges for the creative team. “We are utilizing the full roundness of the theatre,” said DCPA Lighting Designer Charles R. MacLeod. “The main wedding table is on a rectangular turntable and will remain in motion throughout the story, which will allow everyone in the audience to take things in from a 360-degree perspective. And because this is wedding reception, that of course means there will be a DJ — compete with janky DJ lighting,” MacLeod said. One seating section in the Space Theatre is being removed in favor of the DJ station, but capacity won’t change much because two of the “voms” that usually serve as actor entranceways will instead be used for seating.

Lopez says it was the encouragement he got from the DCPA creative team during the making of The Legend of Georgia McBride that got him to revisit Zoey’s Perfect Wedding. The DCPA conducted development workshops of the play in Denver and Steamboat Springs, which were shown to various audiences for their feedback. One thing they learned from the experience is that 17-year-olds apparently love to laugh at weddings gone horribly, horrifically wrong, “because 17-year-olds love this play,” said Donahue, The director added that the support he gets from the Denver Center team is just one reason, he said, that “to this day, this is my favorite place to work.” 

More Colorado theatre coverage on the DCPA NewsCenter

John Moore was named one of the 12 most influential theater critics in the U.S. by American Theatre Magazine in 2011. He has since taken a groundbreaking position as the Denver Center’s Senior Arts Journalist.

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding: Cast and creatives announced:

• Playwright: Matthew Lopez
• Director: Mike Donahue

   

• Jeff Biehl as Charlie
• Grayson DeJesus as Sammy
• Nick Ducassi as DJ
• Nija Okoro as Zoey
• Mallory Portnoy as Rachel
• Kristin Villanueva as Missy

   

• Scenic Designer: Dane Laffrey
• Costume Designer: Dede Ayite
• Lighting Designer: Charles R. MacLeod
• Sound Designer: Veronika Vorel
• Dramaturg: Kimberly Colburn
• Stage Manager: Kurt Van Raden
• Assistant Stage Manager: Corin Ferris

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding: Ticket information
At a glance: The blushing bride. The touching toast. The celebration of true love. These are the dreams of Zoey’s big day…and the opposite of what it’s turning out to be. Disaster after disaster follow her down the aisle, from brutally honest boozy speeches to a totally incompetent wedding planner. Even worse, her friends are too preoccupied with their own relationship woes to help with the wreckage around them. Like a car crash you can’t look away from, watch in awe as this wildly funny fiasco destroys her expectations with the realities of commitment, fidelity and growing up.

• Presented by the DCPA Theatre Company
• Performances Jan. 19-Feb. 25
• Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex
• Tickets start at $25
• Call 303-893-4100 or BUY ONLINE
• Sales to groups of 10 or more click here