The lights are low, smooth jazz is coming out of the speaker, and the seats are a plush purple. For the next few weeks, the hot date spot around campus might become the Overture Center's Playhouse Theatre. Why, you might ask? Well, because it is at this venue that the Madison Repertory Theatre is putting on their production of ""Bad Dates.""
""Bad Dates"" is a one-woman show about the life of Haley, a divorced mother of a 13-year-old daughter, who is getting back in the Manhattan dating scene after a more than decade-long hiatus.
The play is written by Therese Rebeck, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in drama, best known for her Peabody award-winning work on NYPD Blue. Haley's first monologue is expository, giving us the background of how she went from married in Texas to looking for love in New York. She is a self-proclaimed ""shoe freak"" and spends a good 10 minutes going through trials and tribulations that are associated with the hunt of a good pair of Salvatore Ferragamos or Jimmy Choos. It's funny if you can properly pronounce Manolo Blahnik while keeping a straight face.
The opening monologue ends when Haley leaves to go out on her first date, and if you can survive or sympathize with these first few minutes of shoe ""fetishization"" then the rest of the play becomes a more complex comedic delight. Haley, played by Martie Sanders, is a strong, well-rounded and, thankfully, highly accessible character. She is a great storyteller, and as she tells us the stories of what is going on in her life and on her dates, she transforms the audience into her cheering section.
In many ways, Haley is a vicarious channel through whom the audience can live out a number of bad dating adventures. As the title ""Bad Dates"" implies, most of the dates Haley goes through are pretty terrible. She runs the gamut of bad date scenarios from a man obsessed with the state of his colon to a blind date with a gay man who offers her no conversation as he flirts with the waiters. We can see our emotional selves as we follow Haley through the recaps of her dates as the nervous excitement turns to a more nervous disappointment of a date gone poorly. Coupled with the narratives of the dates, is also the narrative of Haley's daytime life as ""a weird restaurant idiot savant."" She is the restaurant manager of a high-end chic Manhattan restaurant with Romanian mob connections. This element adds some more dimensions to Haley's character and helps her get some more dates.
The production was aptly directed by Kate Buckley, whose background leans heavily on Shakespearean theatre. ""Bad Dates"" is not a Shakespearean play, it is not five acts, and the script is not in blank verse, but what it does have is a good laugh and accessibility. Haley is going through what many of us in college are going through, and she is trying to make meaningful human connections. She wants sex, she wants intimacy, and she wants to feel less alone. If you go and see ""Bad Dates"" it might not guarantee you a good one, but you will be well entertained.
