After the conclusion of “My Dear Debbie,” the theatergoers at my table sat in silence. It took a moment or two for us, all strangers, to speak a little and try to re-regulate our emotions. “I’m still… I’m still… thinking,” one tablemate said.

“My Dear Debbie,” a new play from Casey Tregeagle, is like that. Making its premiere in a production from New Generation Theatrical, the show opens like an “I Love Lucy” episode — the title an homage to that classic TV program. But the play picks up power as the laughter begins to ring much, much more hollow.

The play emulates the recording of a 1950s sitcom. As noted, theatergoers sit at tables and perky Imogen (Hannah McGinley Lemasters, with a suspiciously bright smile) instructs the studio audience to follow the light-up applause signs and laugh along with the canned laugh track.

The TV episode’s plot finds Debbie in a fix: She bought a coat against her husband’s orders — and, yes, “orders” is the right word — and now she’s roping her friend Bev, in the Ethel Mertz position, to help her wiggle out of her jam. Typical sitcom setup.

Interestingly, the laugh track does what it’s meant to do: Makes the onstage antics seem funnier and frees the audience — in this case, the theatergoers — to laugh along.

But in a deliberately abrupt change of tone, the recording stops and we suddenly meet an anxious and angry man who is appealing to a warden for permission to see someone important to him. Huh?

The unsettling shift lays the groundwork for the emotional ride ahead. To say more about the plot would be a disservice, but it’s fascinating the way Tregeagle deconstructs the humor of those old sitcoms to expose the misogyny of the time — think of “To the moon, Alice!” from “The Honeymooners.”

That laugh track keeps going but suddenly sounds far more sinister.

What trouble are Bev and Debbie (Beth-Ann Stripling, left, and Taylor Byerly) up to now, in “My Dear Debbie,” a new play from New Generation Theatrical. (Courtesy New Generation Theatrical)

Tregeagle also directs and shows a firm grasp of both the comedic and dramatic scenes — although he could let Taylor Byerly, as the titular Debbie, go even bigger and broader with the comedy a la Lucille Ball’s mugging-heavy style. Byerly is funny but going even bigger early on would increase the already significant gut punch when she compellingly adopts a much different tone for the play’s climactic scene.

Wisely, Tregeagle gives the anxious young man some flaws so he isn’t one-dimensional, though making him gay adds some perhaps unintended messaging to his story. In any case, River Banks neatly captures the man’s inner turmoil with a performance that also deftly shifts in tone from almost abraisive to poignant, as the story dictates.

In addition to the comedy, Lemasters also gets to show off her dramatic chops, as does Michael Knight as Debbie’s genial-until-he’s-not TV husband. Fine support comes from Beth-Ann Stripling, Eric Sharp, Alex Mrazek and Carly Clark — though I wish Tregeagle had more strongly drawn the parallels between the two characters Clark plays.

River Banks plays a man seeking answers to long-ago questions in CaseyTregeagle’s “My Dear Debbie,” making its premiere in a New Generation Theatrical production. (Courtesy New Generation Theatrical)

As usual, New Generation builds in a couple of short breaks so audience members can visit the bar. But it might have been more effective in this case to let “My Dear Debbie” run straight through, increasing the disquieting sense that this play emotionally conveys: that life sometimes hurtles from humor to horror.

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter.

‘My Dear Debbie’

• Length: 1:45, including two intermissions

• Where: New Generation Theatrical Studio at Fashion Square Mall, 3201 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando

• When: Through Feb. 22

• Cost: $25

• Info: newgentheatrical.org

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/02/15/my-dear-debbie-review-new-generation-theatrical/