Bad Dates

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Theresa Rebeck’s play Bad Dates produced by Modern Muse Theatre Company currently playing at the Bug Theatre must have developed out of a bad dream.

Haley (Diana Dresser) prepares for a bad date in a scene from Modern Muse Theatre Company’s Bad Dates.

Dating in today’s highflying society frequently can be a nightmare. No question about that, but no matter how one cuts it, dating is always a two way street of conversational decisions. Just because one asks doesn’t necessarily mean one has to say yes. Discretion plays a vital role, unless one is desperate, then one has to be willing to accept what desperation hands over.

Haley Walker, a divorcee recently moved to New York City with her 12-year-old daughter, Vera. Deciding she needs to get back into the swing of things Haley concentrates on dating, shoes, clothes, dating, and shoes.

Played by Creede Repertory Theatre’s Diana Dresser who obviously is endowed with a great deal of talent with an endearing quality as cute as she can be in this role, nevertheless, has limited room to grow her character in this endeavor. The play grows wearisome rather quickly as does the character. This is one single mom whose desperation hangs from the ceiling chandelier flashing rattled anxious neon lights.

Superficial, frivolous, running in circles best describes the content of the two-act play directed by Creede’s Maurice LaMee.

Although LaMee’s direction keeps Haley on the move in her very red appointed bedroom set he designed. Her hyper activity points directly toward complete desperation. Within the first few minutes, Haley comes across as choking on her own life style choices. Her world revolves around only one thing: dating, paranoid over constantly changing clothes, and her 200 pairs of shoes, many she discovers she can no longer wear.

Haley’s 12-year-old daughter, Vera, never appears on stage, playing second fiddle to Haley’s obsessions involuntarily helping her decide what to wear at any given time.

As talented as Dresser is, she doesn’t have the charisma to carry a full play weighted down with superficial dizzy material.

If the script allowed other characters for her to bounce ideas off of, it might have provided some meat to chew. Even one other character in juxtaposition to Haley would have helped greatly. Yes, she does talk with her brother on the phone and yells at Vera down the hall, buy it simply is not enough. Interaction with someone other than the audience would have given the play some substance, which it needs badly.

After getting herself into some difficulty at the restaurant where she works, Haley does show an inch or two of growth, beginning to see people in a different light. She’s not so quick to jump to conclusions with a caustic sense of humor. This however comes at the end of the play looking as though it were a tag in attempt to redeem a silly narcissistic self-conscious woman plagued with insecurities. There is hope Haley may indeed grow up, but not within the confines of the play. She blows it when she loses her temper with Vera over the phone because of a disappointment she actually walked into with eyes wide open seeing nothing but her own screeching wants.

Undoubtedly, there are several who will resonate with Haley and bad decisions resulting in bad dates. Laughing over bad dates while wounds are licked are a most popular point of conversation, always forgetting it takes two to tango.

Expertise in this production comes with the direction that at least matched the scatterbrain character with hyper-inventive movements, Robert Byers Lighting design, Brian Freeland’s sound design, and Meghan Anderson Doyle’s costume design requiring quantity to keep up with Haley’s helter skelter fascination over ostentatious concentration of placing the “em-PHA-sis” on the wrong “syl-LA-ble.”

Modern Muse now in its second year was fast gaining a reputation for quality material, but Bad Dates doesn’t measure up to previous productions. The material presented in two acts might do well as a one act or a Saturday Night Live sketch.