Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its premiere that is off-Broadway at Westside Theatre.
Go on it from a veteran: on line dating suuuuucks. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge reduce regarding the awkwardness that is included with approaching prospective love passions in individual and achieving to discern a person’s singlehood into the place that is first. But placing apart the truth that even the many algorithm that is complexn’t constantly anticipate in-person chemistry, forcing potential daters to boil by themselves right down to a self-summary leads people to not just placed across an idealized type of by themselves for general public usage, but additionally encourages individuals to latch on the many surface-level aspects to quickly see whether someone’s worth pursuing romantically. For ladies especially, online dating sites could even be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even worse from toxic men whom feel emboldened by the privacy for the Web.
Yet, internet dating remains popular, hence rendering it a target ripe for satire. Enter #DateMe: an experiment that is okCupid. Conceived by Robyn Lynne Norris, whom cowrote the show with Bob Ladewig and Frank Caeti, and situated in component on the very very own experiences, the task is simply an extended sketch-comedy show, featuring musical figures, improvisatory sections with market involvement, and interactive elements (the show possesses its own OkCupid-like software that everybody is encouraged to install and create pages on prior to the show). In the place of a plot, there is a character arc of kinds: Robyn (played in this premiere that is off-Broadway Kaitlyn Ebony), finding by by herself obligated to try OkCupid the very first time, chooses to see just what is best suited in the software by producing 38 fake pages. If that appears overzealous, some of her rules — including never ever fulfilling some of the people she converses with online — declare that this alleged test has been made to fail through the outset. The cynicism and despair underlying Robyn’s overelaborate ruse is sometimes recognized for the show, with components of pathos associated with tips of the troubled romantic past and recommendations that she’s got difficulty making deep connections with individuals generally speaking peeking through the laughs.
When it comes to part that is most, however, #DateMe is content to keep a frothy tone while doling away its insights.
Robyn’s observations of seeing a number of the exact same phrases and character faculties on pages result in faux-educational portions where the other countries in the cast that is eight-member donning white lab coats (Vanessa Leuck designed the colorfully diverse costumes), break people on to groups. Perhaps the creepiest of communications Robyn gets on OkCupid are turned into cathartically songs that are amusingauthored by Sam Davis, with words by Norris, Caeti, Ladewig, and Amanda Blake Davis). And when such a thing, the two improvisatory segments — one in that your performers speculate how a date that is first two solitary market members would go according to their profiles and reactions with their concerns, one other a dramatization of a gathering user’s worst very first date — grow to be the comic shows of this show (or at the very least, they certainly were during the performance I went to).
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It surely assists that the cast — which, along with Ebony, includes Chris Alvarado, Jonathan Gregg, Eric Lockley, Megan Sikora, Liz Wisan, Jillian Gottlieb, and Jonathan Wagner — are highly spirited and game. Lorin Latarro emphasizes a feeling of playfulness inside her way and choreography, particularly with a collection, created by David L. Arsenault, that mixes the aesthetic of living spaces and game shows; and projections by Sam Hains that infuse the show utilizing the feeling that is appropriate of overload.
#DateMe is really so entertaining into the minute that just do you realize afterward exactly how trivial its view of internet dating in fact is. Because of this viewer at the very least, it was disappointing to note the show’s blind spot in terms of race and just how discrimination nevertheless plays away on dating apps today. As well as on a wider degree, the show doesn’t link the increase of dating apps to your predominance of social media marketing most importantly, motivating a change more toward immediate gratification than in-depth connection. Like the majority of of the very first times dating apps are going to give you on, #DateMe: An OkCupid test provides a completely enjoyable break without making you with much to remember after it really is over.