Just in time for ‘Last Easter’

Now that you’re finished celebrating this Easter, it’s time to take a look at “Last Easter.”

That’s the title of the latest production at the Laguna Playhouse, opening Saturday and running through May 21.

The Laguna version will be only the second production of Bryony Lavery’s rather bizarre comedy, which premiered in New York in October, 2005. Playhouse executive director Richard Stein is staging the show.

“Last Easter” revolves around four showbiz friends who take off on a whirlwind journey from their homes in London to Lourdes, France (where one of them is thoroughly dunked in holy water).

The wacky episode includes laughing, singing, drag acts, a ghostly stagehand and many bottles of wine.

All this, however, happened, as the title says, last Easter. This Easter, they remember it all.

The play’s action spans two Easters in the lives of four friends, one of whom is suffering from incurable, secondary cancer.

And yes, it’s a comedy, as summed up by the central character thusly:

“So the plan is ? They’re going to take me to Lourdes and I’m going to be miraculously cured of secondary cancer from which no one recovers by a phenomenon celebrated by a religion I don’t believe in without my knowing it.”

Stein describes “Last Easter” as “a provocative, funny and moving new play about friendship, its obligations and its unforeseen consequences.”

Playwright Lavery was nominated for a Tony award, as well as Outer Critics Circle and Drama League mentions, for her play “Frozen” in 1998. She has just finished the first draft of her latest script, “The Thing With Feathers,” for the McCarter Theater in Princeton.

The cast includes Kirsten Benson, Yosefa Forma, Kelly Mantle, Helen Wassell and Jay Skovec. It’ll be return Laguna visits for Benton, who appeared in “Inside Out” in 1998, and Wassell, featured in “Communicating Doors” in 2000.

Performances of “Last Easter” will be at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, with tickets ranging from $20 to $59.

Further information is available at the playhouse box office, (949) 494-2787.