Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its off-Broadway premiere during the Westside Theatre.
Go on it from a veteran: on line dating suuuuucks. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge reduce in the awkwardness that accompany 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 perhaps the many algorithm that is complexn’t constantly anticipate in-person chemistry, forcing potential daters to boil on their own down seriously to a self-summary leads people to not just placed across an idealized form of on their own for general general public usage, but in addition encourages individuals to latch on the many surface-level aspects to quickly see whether someone’s worth pursuing romantically. For females especially, internet dating can also be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even worse from toxic males whom feel emboldened because of the privacy associated with online.
Yet, internet dating remains popular, therefore 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 component on the very own experiences, the task is simply a sketch-comedy that is extended, featuring musical figures, improvisatory segments with market involvement, and interactive elements (the show features its own OkCupid-like application that everybody else is encouraged to download and create pages on before the show). Rather than a plot, there is a character arc of types: 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 regarding the software by producing 38 fake pages. If that seems overzealous, a few of her guidelines — including never ever fulfilling some of the individuals 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 sporadically 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.
For the part that is most, however, #DateMe is content to steadfastly keep up a frothy tone while doling away its insights.
Robyn’s findings of seeing most of the exact same phrases and character characteristics on pages result in faux-educational sections when the remaining portion of the eight-member cast, 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 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 your performers speculate how a very first date between two solitary market people would get considering their profiles and reactions with their concerns, one other a dramatization of an audience user’s worst very very very first date — grow to be the comic shows for the show (or at the least, they certainly were in the performance we went to).
It surely assists that the cast — which, along with Ebony, includes Chris Alvarado chat hour, 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, specially 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 aided by the appropriate sense of multimedia overload.
#DateMe can be so entertaining within the minute that just afterward are you aware just just how trivial its view of internet dating in fact is. Because of this audience at the very least, it absolutely was disappointing to note the show’s blind spot in terms of battle and exactly how discrimination nevertheless plays down on dating apps today. As well as on a 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. Like the majority of associated with very very first times dating apps will probably give you on, #DateMe: An OkCupid test provides a completely enjoyable periods without making you with much to remember after it really is over.
