Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its off-Broadway premiere during the Westside Theatre.
Go from a veteran: on the web suuuuucks that are dating. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge reduce from 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 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 type of elite singles PЕ™ihlГЎЕЎenГ by themselves for general general general public usage, but in addition encourages individuals to latch onto the many surface-level aspects to quickly see whether someone’s worth pursuing romantically. For females especially, online dating could even be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even even worse from toxic males whom feel emboldened by the privacy associated with Web.
Yet, online dating sites remains popular, therefore 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 located in component on her behalf very very very own experiences, the job is actually a sketch-comedy that is extended, featuring musical figures, improvisatory portions with market involvement, and interactive elements (the show features its own OkCupid-like application that everybody is encouraged to install and create pages on ahead of the show). In the place of a plot, there is a character arc of types: Robyn (played in this off-Broadway premiere by Kaitlyn Ebony), finding by by by herself forced to test OkCupid for the first time, chooses to see just what is best suited in the application 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 built to fail through the outset. The cynicism and despair underlying Robyn’s overelaborate ruse is periodically recognized through the entire show, with components of pathos associated with tips of a troubled past that is romantic recommendations that she’s got difficulty making deep connections with individuals generally speaking peeking through the laughs.
When it comes to many part, however, #DateMe is content to keep up a frothy tone while doling down its insights.
Robyn’s findings of seeing most exact exact same expressions and character faculties on pages result in faux-educational sections where the remaining portion of 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 amusingpublished 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 users would go according to their pages and responses for their concerns, one other a dramatization of an audience user’s worst very first date — grow to be the comic shows regarding the show (or at the least, these were during the performance I went to).
It really helps 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, 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 when you look at the minute that just do you realize afterward just just exactly exactly how trivial its view of internet dating in fact is. With this audience at the least, it had been disappointing to note the show’s blind spot in terms of competition and just how discrimination nevertheless plays away on dating apps today. As well as on a wider degree, the show does not link the rise of dating apps to your predominance of social networking most importantly, motivating a change more toward immediate satisfaction than in-depth connection. Similar to of this very very very very first times dating apps will likely give you on, #DateMe: an experiment that is okCupid a completely enjoyable periods without making you with much to remember after it is over.