(L to R): Gregory Franklin, Gabrielle Wagner, Leslie Stevens, Rick Segall and Lowe Taylor.

Erin Kamler is a woman who knows what she’s talking about when she quotes the old saying: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” Twice divorced, the lifelong musician and composer married her muse to her experiences and produced “Divorce! The Musical,” which is now enjoying a highly-successful extended run at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood.
The musical is a wry, poignant and very funny examination of what can be a surprisingly brutal process when two people who once vowed to love each other “’till death do they part” decide to cut their losses and split. In one scene, the opposing lawyers conspire to drag out the process as long as possible so as to fatten their own purses. While Kamler asserts that that’s not always the case, it’s not entirely out of the question either. “As a writer, I think you have to blur reality with fiction, so I took a lot of the emotional content of what I’d been through and turned it into stories.” Even-handed and sympathetic, she takes an endearing look at the comedy and tragedy on both sides, as the ex-wife resides in a house devoid of furniture while the ex-husband is forced to retreat to his parents’ basement.
In Kamler’s skilled hands, her story of love lost, split and permanently rendered at $500 per hour in legal fees is brilliantly executed. Amusingly, this production even resulted in her becoming engaged to her producer. So, maybe the third time will be a charm. For now, though, “Divorce! The Musical” is a diamond snatched from the ashes of two unhappy endings.

“Divorce! The musical” plays through May 17, 2009 at the Hudson Main stage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood. Performance schedule is Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. All tickets are $34.99. Tickets are available by calling or online at www.DivorceMusical.com.