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 regarding the awkwardness that is included with approaching possible love passions in individual and achieving to discern somebody’s singlehood within the beginning. But placing apart the fact perhaps the many algorithm that 
is complexn’t always 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 themselves for 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 ladies 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 associated with the online.
Yet, internet dating remains popular, therefore which makes 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 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 possesses its own OkCupid-like software that everybody is encouraged to install and create pages 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 forced to try OkCupid the very first time, chooses to see just what is most effective in the application by creating 38 fake pages. If that appears overzealous, a number 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 sometimes recognized through the entire show, with items of pathos associated with tips of the troubled romantic past and recommendations that she’s got difficulty making deep connections with individuals in basic peeking through the laughs.
For the part that is most, however, #DateMe is content to keep up a frothy tone while doling away its insights.
Robyn’s findings of seeing most exact exact same expressions and personality faculties on pages result in faux-educational portions where the remaining portion of the eight-member cast, donning white lab coats (Vanessa Leuck designed the colorfully varied costumes), break people on to groups. also the creepiest of communications Robyn receives on OkCupid are turned into cathartically songs that are amusingpublished by Sam Davis, with words by Norris, Caeti, Ladewig, and Amanda Blake Davis). Of course any such thing, the two improvisatory segments — one in that the performers speculate on how a very first date between two solitary market users would get predicated on their pages and reactions with their concerns, the other a dramatization of an audience user’s worst very very first date — turn into 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, 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 aided by the feeling that is appropriate of overload.
#DateMe is really so entertaining within the minute that just later are you aware exactly exactly how shallow its view of online dating sites in fact is. With this audience at the least, it absolutely was disappointing to see the show’s blind spot in terms of battle and just 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 to the predominance of social media marketing in particular, motivating a change more toward immediate satisfaction than in-depth connection. Like the majority of regarding the very very first times dating apps are going to give you on, #DateMe: an experiment that is okCupid a perfectly enjoyable break without leaving you with much to remember after it really is over.