Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its off-Broadway premiere in the Westside Theatre.
Go on it from the veteran: on line dating suuuuucks. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge reduce regarding the awkwardness that accompany approaching possible love passions in individual and achieving to discern another person’s singlehood into the beginning. But placing apart the truth that perhaps the many complex algorithm can’t constantly anticipate in-person chemistry, forcing potential daters to boil by themselves down seriously to a self-summary leads people to not just placed across an idealized type of by themselves for general general general public usage, but in addition encourages visitors to latch onto the many surface-level aspects to quickly see whether someone’s worth pursuing romantically. For females especially, online dating sites can also be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even worse from toxic males whom feel emboldened by the privacy for the online.
Yet, online dating sites remains popular, thus which makes it a target ripe for satire. Enter #DateMe: An OkCupid Test. Conceived by Robyn Lynne Norris, whom cowrote the show with Bob Ladewig and Frank Caeti, and located in part on her behalf very own experiences, the task is actually a sketch-comedy that is extended, featuring musical figures, improvisatory sections with market participation, and interactive elements (the show features its own OkCupid-like application that everybody is encouraged to install and create pages on prior to the show). Rather than a plot, there is a character arc of types: Robyn (played in this premiere that is off-Broadway Kaitlyn Black), finding 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 it appears overzealous, several of her guidelines — including never ever meeting some of the individuals she converses with online — declare that this experiment that is so-called been made to fail through the outset. The cynicism and despair underlying Robyn’s overelaborate ruse is periodically recognized through the show, with components of pathos associated with tips of a troubled romantic past and suggestions that she’s got difficulty making deep connections with people in basic peeking through the laughs.
For the many part, however, #DateMe is content to keep a frothy tone while doling away its insights.
Robyn’s findings of seeing lots of the exact same phrases and character faculties on pages result in faux-educational sections in which the other countries in the eight-member cast, donning white lab coats (Vanessa Leuck designed the colorfully diverse costumes), break people on to groups. also the creepiest of communications Robyn gets on OkCupid are turned into cathartically songs that are amusingpublished by Sam Davis, with words by Norris, Caeti, Ladewig, and Amanda Blake Davis). And in case any such thing, the two improvisatory segments — one out of that your performers speculate how a date that is first two solitary market members would get according to their pages and reactions with their concerns, one other a dramatization of a gathering user’s worst first date — grow to be the comic shows associated with show (or at the least, these were during the performance we went to).
It really assists that the cast — which, as well as 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 group, created by David L. Arsenault, that mixes the aesthetic of living spaces and game programs; and projections by Sam Hains that infuse the show utilizing the feeling that is appropriate of overload.
#DateMe is really so entertaining within the minute that just do you realize afterward just how shallow its view of internet dating in fact is. Today for this viewer at least, it was disappointing to notice the show’s blind spot when it comes to race and how discrimination still plays out on dating apps. As well as on a wider degree, the show does not link the increase of dating apps into the predominance of social media marketing in particular, motivating a change what is matchocean more toward immediate satisfaction than in-depth connection. Like the majority of associated with very first times dating apps will probably deliver you on, #DateMe: an experiment that is okCupid a completely enjoyable break without making you with much to remember after it is over.
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