Oh, the video games folks play, not 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.
These names – together with Constance Wu, Tramell Tillman and Michael Oberholtzer – can’t assist however elevate expectations that, frustratingly, go largely unmet. In different phrases, Shit Has Shut Name With Fan.
Primarily based on Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian movie Excellent Strangers, with some important character modifications, Shit. Meet. Fan. unfolds in actual time as a gathering of outdated buddies decides to play a harmful sport: Placing their telephones on a desk, every agrees – some extra reluctantly than others, all bolstered by booze and some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 and techniques can 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 encompasses a luxe, superbly lit New York Metropolis loft set (designed by the ever-reliable Clint Ramos) that justly qualifies as actual property porn, Shit. Meet. Fan. brings collectively a gaggle of longtime buddies – principally prosperous, almost 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 good friend, is bringing his new girlfriend to satisfy the household, because it had been.
That the girlfriend doesn’t present, and Logan appears a bit jittery about it, is the kind of hint-dropping that O’Hara (Slave Play) delights in. A few 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 horny, skilled couple (he’s a plastic surgeon, she’s a therapist). Although they bicker about their 17-year-old daughter Sam (Genevieve Hannelius) – mother is very anxious and important of {the teenager}’s newfound sexual awakening – the couple doesn’t appear significantly George-and-Martha, not less than not initially.
The good friend group about to reach consists of Rodger’s outdated frat brothers and their wives and girlfriends. (Greatest to not dwell on the 20-year age span among the many solid – there can 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 costs 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 difficulty along with his outdated buddies.
Anybody 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 cellphone 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.
Whereas Shit. Meet. Fan. definitely has a fair-enough share of guffaws to not less than considerably steadiness the ugliness (the latter together with, however not restricted to, a not-very-credible casually uttered barrage of homophobic slurs). With out freely giving 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 girl to a nursing dwelling, 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 college coach afford pricy ski holidays? What’s the cope with 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, specifically, scores in a go-for-broke comedic efficiency, and Oberholtzer – a late alternative 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 doubtless has extra in widespread 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 think about 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
Forged: Garret Dillahunt, Genevieve Hannelius, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing, Michael Oberholtzer, Tramell Tillman, Constance Wu
Working time: 1 hr 45 min (no intermission)
