"LAUGHS IN SPANISH" AND ENGLISH COURTESY OF HARTFORD STAGE

Art Basel is the major, significant, triumphant, ultimate art event in Miami every year since 2002. What would you do but freak out if you are a gallery owner and all your exciting artwork has disappeared just on the event’s eve? In addition your phones won’t stop ringing. Your assistant Caro is acting suspiciously. Could things get any worse? If your name is Mariana, the unfortunate answer is YES! You discover your well known but often absent mother Estella has arrived on your doorstep complete with her problems and her matched set of luggage.

For twenty two years Art Basel Miami Beach hosts one of the biggest art events there, with additional ones in Basel Switzerland, Hong Kong and Paris. With hundreds of galleries of paintings, sculpture, video art, murals, prints and photographs from dozens of countries, the showings are the epitome of the art world. You have the unique opportunity to enter Mari’s complicated chaos in Alexis Scheer’s colorful comedy “Laughs in Spanish” until Sunday, March 30 at Hartford Stage, under the direction of Lisa Portes.

As Miami’s longest running contemporary and modern art fair, Studio Six Miami’s owner Mari has every right to be on the verge of panic. Her reputation is on the line, Her career is on the verge of destruction. What fire does she extinguish first? Why does her mother pick this chaotic moment to insert her ubiquitous presence when it always spells trouble? For playwright Alexis Scheer, this comedy takes her back to her home, a Valentine to Miami and to her grandparents’ dress shop and to her parents’ button company, both on the streets where Art Basel now resides.

Here cultures clash, voices change, relationships shift, all while Mari tries frantically to right her world before it implodes. Who stole her art? Is Caro the wannabe artist who wants her own work mounted at the gallery working with her policeman/ boyfriend Juan guilty of the heist? Will Mari be able to reconcile her years of differences with her movie star mom Estella? Can Mari relax long enough to find the love she so deserves to have?

Art lovers will be especially intrigued making the acquaintance of galley owner Stephanie Machado’s Mariana, her painter assistant Maria Victoria Martinez’s Caroline, Caroline’s love interest Luis Vega’s Juan the policeman, Mari’s dramatically endowed mother Maggie Bofill’s Estella and potentially more than Mari’s good friend Olivia Hebert’s Jenny.

For tickets ($30-105), call the Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street, Hartford at 860-527-5151 or online at ticketing.hartfordstage.org/laughs-in-spanish. Performances are Wednesday - Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. with talk back afterward. Watch for a special auction of spring items in “Bids in Bloom” April 25 to May 18, a Red Carpet Party tor the 70th Annual Tony Awards, a Broadway event Sunday , June 8 and a current fundraising tribute to the founder of the Hartford Stage Jacques Cartier 1930-2024, in the Set the Stage Campaign, HartfordStage.org/Set-the-Stage.

Get ready to rhumba as this colorful comedy creates laughter in Spanish and English for your art-full enjoyment.