Bad Dates Ultimately Delivers

Bad Dates by Theresa Rebeck
Kansas City Repertory Theater
Copaken Stage

I saw Bad Dates on opening night last night. The wife and I trundled downtown to the almost-finished Power & Light District for a night of theater. The district itself is taking shape quite nicely and I expect it to a great, glittering destination when it’s finished later this year. If you’re a Missouri Tiger fan, come on down for the big pep rally before the MU-KU game at Arrowhead.

Anyway, Bad Dates is a one-person show. It’s about a single mom’s dating life in New York City. With that one sentence synopsis I was thinking that this would be an onstage "Sex and the City". Then we walked into the theatre and took a look at the stage. The set was an apartment’s bedroom: bed, closet, dresser, vanity, lounge chair. Above the bed were five pictures declaring the inhabitant of this room to be a Cool Mom. The most noticeable thing about this set was the shoes. Shoes were strewn everywhere; on every flat surface, over the closet door and exploding all over and out of the closet. It’s an interesting look to see a set that was mostly bought, as opposed to built. I had a small tremor though, that this might be even more of a confection of a show than I had previously thought. Forget SATC, think "Caroline in the City".

The show is carried on the shoulders of the only actor, Rebecca Dines. Ms. Dines is an Australian actor with a substantial list of credits. When she appeared onstage, however I had a bad feeling. Her American accent seemed muddled and imprecise. It was only later that I realized the degree of difficulty of the accent she did, both American and Texan. With that taken into account the occasional peeks of her Antipodean origins are understandable. When the show goes on for a bit, her language settles down more. Honestly, I wondered why she just didn’t make the character Australian and speak in her normal voice.

Ms. Dines has an appealing energy onstage, but in the entire first half of the production that energy seems uncontrolled, wild, as if her arms and legs are separate actors in the show. She flies around the stage and tries on many different outfits and shoes and directing her monologue at and interacting with the audience. As the show continues though, her true abilities as a performer are revealed. When the director allows her to, she can deliver a strong performance as this harried, charming, insecure woman. The entire first half of the show, unfortunately, she is less the character and more the dervish. I suspect that this was a direction choice and the show is poorer for it. When Ms. Dines, in the second half, is allowed to stand still and show the character and not the movement Bad Dates is an enjoyable piece of theatre.

Another issue with the directing is that whenever Ms. Dines would come to a point in the show where she would get to speak a truth about her character, she would come downstage and the lights would dim behind her. It’s such an obvious choice to highlight her with technical elements, rather than let the actor’s performance speak for itself. Why not give her a chance to connect with the audience on her own without hitting us over the head that now an Important Speech is coming?

The script by Theresa Rebeck has some unusual twists that can be incongruous, but I think the show hangs together well, albeit in two distinct pieces. Ms. Rebeck is a former writer for "Law & Order", and it shows in a lot of the characters that are introduced in the script. There are many small touches that become significant later in the show, which I thought was a nice touch.
Even though Bad Dates starts out as a light, airy piece of theatre, the second half of the show is real and left me with an overall positive feeling about it.

Bad Dates runs until October 21st at the Copaken Stage at the H&R Block Center, 13th and Walnut, Kansas City, MO. Tickets can be purchased at 816-235-2700 or online at http://www.kcrep.org/.