After meeting virtually on a dating app, two matched – or more accurately, mismatched -strangers get together at a bar for a disastrous evening that keeps on going in the NYC debut of writer Miriam Battye’s over-the-top rom-com turned dramedy Strategic Love Play, now in a five-week engagement at Off-Broadway’s Minetta Lane Theatre, following a UK tour and sold-out runs at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and London’s Soho Theatre. Under the animated direction of Katie Posner, the two-hander takes an acerbic look at the façade of online profiles and first dates, in favor of exposing the truth of who people really are (including their actual names), what they’ve been through, and what they’re looking for in each other, a relationship, and the future.
Heléne Yorke and Michael Zegen star as the completely incompatible woman and man, who immediately clash and seem to have nothing in common – most notably their polar-opposite attitudes. She’s brazenly aggressive and confrontational, making insulting jokes and self-deprecating comments, and laughing loudly at them; he’s awkward, unsure, and apologetic, though he hasn’t really done anything that demands an apology. After finishing their beers, he’s politely ready to call it a night, but she insists he stay for another round of drinks and sparring.
For some inexplicable reason, he does, she continues to pose invasive questions, to demand he stop lying about his presumably negative thoughts and feelings towards her, and to pressure him into being his real self. Her confrontational probing and his increasingly open answers generate intense sparks, as their ongoing conversation begins to uncover their calamitous dating histories, resultant insecurities, and shared hesitancy in getting hurt again. Will her no-holds-barred strategy (and even more beers) work in forging a possible love connection between them? Or will the emotional damage from the past keep them apart and alone?
Posner keeps the actors moving around the stage, sitting, standing, walking, and kneeling at their table, coming together and separating, phoning their best friends and leaving messages with updates while the other is out of sight, getting drinks or heading towards the door, as they learn more about each other and themselves. It all happens in an empty place, devoid of other patrons or even a visible bartender – a metaphor of their own emptiness, accentuated with a telling soundscape by Tei Blow.
Costumes by Dede Ayite are contemporary casual and indicative of the distinctly antithetical personalities of the two. Arnulfo Maldonado’s ample set allows them the space they need and contains a revolving pedestal on which they and their central table spin as the tone shifts back and forth, and mood lighting by Jen Schriever, with pendant balls and clusters of string lights above, illuminates the figures with spotlights at key points in their revelatory process. Props by Jackson Berkley include an ever-increasing number of empty beer bottles and a bag of potato chips with which Zegen’s emotionally developing character performs a meet-cute trick on his journey to feeling more comfortable and trying to charm his not-so-charming date.
Produced by Audible, Inc. and Chase This Production, the live performance of Strategic Love Play, with its humorous and contrary characterizations by the excellent Zegen and Yorke, will also be recorded and released at a later date on Audible, so if you can’t make it to Minetta Lane, you can listen to the audio version of the play at home and around the world, and find out if the time is right for them to heal their wounds and open themselves up to honesty, trust, and love again.
Running Time: Approximately 70 minutes, without intermission.
Strategic Love Play plays through Saturday, December 7, 2024, at Audible Theater, performing at Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane, NYC. For tickets (priced at $59-89, including fees), go online.