Oh, the video games folks play, no less than in stage performs like Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, The Boys In The Band and, now, Shit. Meet. Fan., Robert O’Hara’s world premiere darkish comedy opening tonight Off Broadway with a formidable and hard-working solid of big-name actors together with, for starters, Garret Dillahunt, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski and Debra Messing.
Those names – together with Constance Wu, Tramell Tillman and Michael Oberholtzer – can’t assist however increase expectations that, frustratingly, go largely unmet. In different phrases, Shit Has Close Call With Fan.
Based on Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian movie Perfect Strangers, with some vital character modifications, Shit. Meet. Fan. unfolds in actual time as a gathering of outdated associates decides to play a harmful sport: Putting their telephones on a desk, every agrees – some extra reluctantly than others, all bolstered by booze and some by cocaine – to permit the others to learn or hear each incoming message over the course of the get together. Secrets will probably be revealed, true (and scathing) emotions floor, and the bonds of marriage and friendship strained to (and perhaps past) the breaking level.
‘Shit. Meet. Fan.’ solid
Julieta Cervantes
Given a stunning manufacturing by MCC Theater that incorporates a luxe, superbly lit New York City loft set (designed by the ever-reliable Clint Ramos) that justly qualifies as actual property porn, Shit. Meet. Fan. brings collectively a bunch of longtime associates – principally prosperous, practically completely white, all with secrets and techniques – for a lunar eclipse-viewing get together that, extra importantly, will even function an introduction to a newcomer: Logan (Tillman), the only real Black buddy, is bringing his new girlfriend to fulfill the household, because it have been.
That the girlfriend doesn’t present, and Logan appears a bit jittery about it, is the type of hint-dropping that O’Hara (Slave Play) delights in. Some of the clue-dropping pays off, some doesn’t.
The gathering takes place within the humongous and opulently appointed Brooklyn condominium (the script describes it, precisely, as “Feng Shui-ed inside an inch of its life”) of Rodger (Harris) and Eve (Krakowski), a sexy, skilled couple (he’s a plastic surgeon, she’s a therapist). Though they bicker about their 17-year-old daughter Sam (Genevieve Hannelius) – mother is particularly anxious and significant of {the teenager}’s newfound sexual awakening – the couple doesn’t appear significantly George-and-Martha, no less than not initially.
The buddy group about to reach consists of Rodger’s outdated frat brothers and their wives and girlfriends. (Best to not dwell on the 20-year age span among the many solid – there will probably be many extra nits to choose over throughout the subsequent 105 minutes).
Harris and Krakowski
Julieta Cervantes
The characters: Brett (Dillahunt), a lawyer about to face fees on a mysterious and lethal auto accident; Claire (Messing), Brett’s alcoholic and really disgruntled spouse; Frank (Oberholtzer), the handsome and hot-tempered paramedic and bro-est of the bros; Hannah (Wu), Frank’s new bride and the visitor least beholden to the longstanding group dynamics; and Tillman’s Logan, a coach at a tony, white prep college whose race appears by no means to have been a problem together with his outdated buddies.
Anyone who has seen playwright and director O’Hara’s Slave Play will suspect that the floor racial concord masks some severe repression and outright dishonesty. The telephone sport – thought up by the passive-aggressive Eve (she’s this play’s equal to Boys within the Band‘s get together host Michael) – will undoubtedly excavate no matter bigotry, racial and in any other case, has been lurking on this group for years.
While Shit. Meet. Fan. actually has a fair-enough share of guffaws to no less than considerably steadiness the ugliness (the latter together with, however not restricted to, a not-very-credible casually uttered barrage of homophobic slurs). Without giving freely too many spoilers, the secrets and techniques that rear their heads throughout the night contain extramarital affairs, an unannounced being pregnant, a plot to commit an outdated woman to a nursing house, a down-low lover, video of a speaking vagina app and a fetish or two.
The frat bros
Julieta Cervantes
It’s anybody’s guess why the partiers would proceed the sport as these skeletons come dancing out of the closet, although a late deus ex machina twist clears issues up (don’t watch Genovese’s movie if you wish to be shocked). Some free threads keep free although. How does an ambulance driver and a faculty coach afford pricy ski holidays? What’s the take care of a fast glimpse of S&M proclivities that will get no additional point out?
O’Hara’s fairly rote route does his play no favors, although he will get terrific performances from his gifted solid. Messing, particularly, scores in a go-for-broke comedic efficiency, and Oberholtzer – a late substitute for Billy Magnussen, who dropped out for well being causes – will remind anybody who noticed his Tony-nominated efficiency in Take Me Out simply how highly effective an actor he’s. Wu subtly demonstrates how her Asian character probably has extra in frequent with Logan than the white majority gathered right here, and Harris and Krakowski successfully faucet into their sitcom roots whereas including some sinister undercurrents – an outline that, come to consider it, just about applies to the play itself.
Title: Shit. Meet. Fan.
Venue: Off Broadway’s MCC Theater
Written And Directed By: Robert O’Hara
Cast: Garret Dillahunt, Genevieve Hannelius, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing, Michael Oberholtzer, Tramell Tillman, Constance Wu
Running time: 1 hr 45 min (no intermission)
Content Source: deadline.com