Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its off-Broadway premiere during the Westside Theatre.
Go from the veteran: on the web suuuuucks that are dating. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge cut down regarding the awkwardness that accompany approaching possible love passions in individual and achieving to discern a person’s singlehood within the place that is first. But putting apart the truth that perhaps the many complex algorithm can’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 form of by themselves for general 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 females especially, online dating sites can also be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even worse from toxic males whom feel emboldened because of the privacy of this Web.
Yet, internet dating remains popular, hence rendering 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 component on her behalf own experiences, the job is actually an extended sketch-comedy show, featuring musical numbers, improvisatory portions with market involvement, and interactive elements (the show possesses its own OkCupid-like software that everybody is encouraged to install and create profiles on ahead of the show). In 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 from the software by producing 38 fake pages. If it appears overzealous, a number of her guidelines — including never ever fulfilling some of the individuals she converses with online — declare that this so-called test has been made to fail through the outset. The cynicism and despair underlying Robyn’s overelaborate ruse is sometimes recognized through 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 as a whole 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 findings of seeing most exact exact exact same expressions and character characteristics on pages result in faux-educational portions when the other countries in the eight-member cast, donning white lab coats (Vanessa Leuck designed the colorfully diverse costumes), break people down into groups. Perhaps the creepiest of communications Robyn gets on OkCupid are turned into cathartically songs that are amusingcompiled 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 the performers speculate how a very first date between two solitary market users would get predicated on their pages and reactions for their concerns, one other a dramatization of an audience user’s worst very first date — turn into the comic highlights associated with the show (or at the very 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 collection, created by David L. Arsenault, that mixes the aesthetic of living spaces and game programs; and projections by Sam Hains that infuse the show with all the appropriate sense of multimedia overload.
#DateMe is really so entertaining into the minute that just later were you aware just just just exactly 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 foreignbride.net/british-brides/ wider degree, the show does not link the increase of dating apps towards the predominance of social networking most importantly, motivating a change more toward immediate satisfaction than in-depth connection. Similar to of the very very first times dating apps are going to give you on, #DateMe: An OkCupid test provides a perfectly enjoyable break without making you with much to remember after it is over.