“Bad Dates” – currently in its final week – is something of a
departure for Geva. It’s a small, cutesy, one-woman show that would seem too
intimate for the theater’s main stage. But a big set and a bigger performance
do a good job filling the space. Unfortunately, they outshine the play itself,
a bizarre script that fails to meet certain expectations and completely baffles
others.
Our date for “Bad Dates” is Haley, a single Southern mom who
escaped a bad marriage, grabbed her daughter, and fled across country to New
York City to live out her dreams. She gets herself a
great rent-controlled apartment and a job she likes as a waitress, and when the
Romanians running her restaurant get thrown in the clink for some shady
business, she discovers that she makes a pretty amazing restaurant manager.
Now, after 10 years of focusing on her career and her daughter, Haley’s trying
the dating scene again. As we watch her get ready for date after date, she
shares every little detail of her life.
And I mean every little detail. What she ate for dinner, her
brother’s coming-out story, the full transcripts of
entire conversations she’s had – everything. She also takes time to
expound on her shoe addiction, supported by a special shop back in Texas and
evidenced by the boxes and boxes (and boxes) of high-heeled footwear that are
progressively revealed as Haley moves about her bedroom set.
The shoe gag is one of the funnier bits in the show, and
that’s not meant as a compliment. “Bad Dates” has been promoted as a
perfect fit for the “Sex and the City” fan. I suppose that’s true, if
that fan were more preoccupied with Carrie Bradshaw’s Manolos than with her
rapacious wit. (Seriously, there are some pretty cute shoes on that stage.)
“Bad Dates” has a couple of chuckle-baiting lines, but the script
just isn’t particularly funny. Charming, perhaps.But funny? Not really. And given that the subject for the
most part is how utterly clueless and awful men are,
there is ample grist for that mill. Even the titular bad dates aren’t really
thatbad. (I’ve forgotten worse dates than this lady has apparently been on;
call me when the person across the table from you surveys the dining room and
tells you which fellow diners he can safely bench press. On
your first date.)
To be fair, the audience laughed more than I did, but I don’t think I heard
one gut-buster all night. And given that it’s a two-hour
show, that’s a long time to go without a serious guffaw when the show is
ostensibly a comedy.
Susannah Schulman as Haley does her very best to wring
maximum entertainment value out of the script. She throws every bit of energy
she’s got into her role. At first I thought she was perhaps trying too hard,
but no – she’s just that woman, the one who takes over dinner parties
with her “funny” stories and wild gesticulations. She is alternately
sweet and sassy, affable and driven, vindictive and compassionate. She is
nearly impossible not to like, and it’s only because of the connection we make
with her that the second act works at all.
About that second act: I literally turned to my companion and asked if we’d
walked into the wrong play after intermission. Act I is all about Haley’s
adventures in dating, the stupidity of men, gender politics, and shoes. It’s
pretty light, frothy stuff. Act II suddenly concerns tax evasion, money
laundering, embezzlement, and the Romanian mafia. There are some hints peppered
throughout the first act, but it’s such a massive tonal shift that I’m still
perplexed as to why the writer, Theresa Rebeck, chose to employ it.
One explanation can be found in Rebeck’s bio: she has previously written for
cop shows, including one of the “Law & Order” programs. (Haley
even comments that her experience at the police precinct was so like TV cop
shows – the dirtiness, the mug books, the interrogation rooms – that she felt
oddly comforted.) I’m a firm believer in the adage “write what you
know,” but when what you know is apparently hardcore crime drama, I
question the wisdom behind shoving it into a story that concerns a sweet single
mom trying to find a boyfriend.
Bad Dates
Through March 30
GevaTheatreCenter, 75
Woodbury Blvd
232-4382 | gevatheatrecenter.org
This article appears in Mar 26-26, 2008.
