←Recommendations of Phillie's Trilogy

Doug DeVita has constructed a multi-layered experience in "Phillie's Trilogy" taking us on a journey of one boy's life, beginning in the 1970s. The 1970s seems an ideal starting place to revisit the real and difficult issues of the day (priest sexual abuse, abortion rights, rigid gender roles, sexual experimentation) and the effects on one suburban family. Much like the plays of the Irish canon, DeVita's play takes on multiple dense, humorous, and sad secrets -- secrets that knit together shared yet separate lives.

A beautifully crafted story not just of being gay, but also the complexities of love, friendship, adolescence, sexuality, and how the past haunts us. DeVita's characters are some of the most believable, realistic, and human characters I've come across in a while, complete with flaws and humor. It was really easy to hear and see the dialogue being performed in my head. There is also a strong sense of the Long Island/Catholic milieu. The role that time plays in this piece is well-done through beautifully executed flashbacks. I can't wait to see this staged soon!

I love a saga and I love the way this one builds a careful foundation for the characters' futures with everything they do and say in their pasts. Better still, PHILLIE'S TRILOGY leads to a clever and satisfying meta theme of writing what you know. I particularly loved the depiction of growing up in the seventies, and its sharp contrast of parenting styles.

Phillie’s Trilogy seduces you with humor and then sandbags you with heart. Phillie MacDougal and his family and friends are painfully true-to-life, as are their occasionally heartbreaking choices. This play deserves a long and national life.

Had the pleasure of catching this at the Fresh Fruit Festival 2 years ago (it went on to win a few awards). Probing look at issues of sexuality backin the 70's. Ambitious in scope, a sensitive look at serious topics of sexuality, bullying and parent-child relationships, leavened with great humor and warmth. Particularly memorable portrait of an at-times emotionally distant mom.

This is an intricate, emotional journey. DeVita's skill at characters, plot and structure is key to this drama. Phillie's relationships with friends and family are strengthened, dissolved, exploded, and reformed.

I’ve admired pieces of this in 10-minute play format, but they couldn't prepare me for this full-length's big, beautiful leaps across time, exploring deep layers of meaning. DeVita’s smart script peers through the lens of the past, casting back to Pre-Roe V. Wade, Pre-Marriage Equality, to a raw, funny, analog childhood. And with incredible structural skill, DeVita carries us forward, to adulthood, as the generations reckon with the past, and move towards the future. PHILLIE’S TRILOGY tackles a myriad human complexities, with characters that shine, and dialogue that’s nothing short of magnetic. A truly breathtaking play.

Phillie’s Trilogy is an original take on friendship, love, family, memory, and the impact art can have on its subjects. At turns achingly tender and archly funny, DeVita’s play shows how relationships can grow, stretch, and disintegrate as the years go by. I’d love to see a production of this one day!

I'm so happy to have read Doug DeVita's sad, hilarious and beautiful elegy, "Phillies Trilogy" The play reads like life: fluid, changeable, unpredictable, painful, happy, loving and beautiful.
The structure of its changing parts reflects the truthfulness and ambivalence of its subjects, the mother who loves so much, is so clueless, so self absorbed, so unselfishly loyal, so faithful and faithless- all at the same time!! All the other characters, too, are painted with the same sense of fair and funny observation, never commented on, always inhabited. Great work to be savored and staged.

Phillie and Barbie are best friends since childhood. We root for them to remain best friends forever, these kids who support each other through thick and thin (including multi-dimensional parents who don't proceed gently). We follow Phillie and Barbie into adulthood, and damn - their friendship comes apart at gut-level seams. I'm left shaken when Phillie discovers he has been rejected in a terribly crushing way. DeVita leaves us with friends who are now "indistinguishable from any other middle aged childhood friends who’d stayed too long at the party."