Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 11
If you’re a man and you haven’t GSoH, you might like to avoid this witty and telling story of Annie’s search for an arthouse cinema buddy on the internet dating service RU4ME. Except, of course, she discovers that, at her age after raising her now-adult children, having a common interest in arthouse cinema is not what it’s really all about. Especially when the few men she meets who actually have a sense of humour very soon find someone else.
Each of the 40 or so others not only have their individual characteristics which activate her delete button, but have in common an inability to recognise her as a person in her own right. “Do I have to become submissive to play this game?” she asks herself, and asks us.
The wonderful thing about her play and her playing of the role is the light touch, which infuses not only the script but the set design (Andrea Espinoza), sound design (Jeremy “Jed” Silver), lighting and video (Nicholas Higgins) and the whole concept in Wayne Harrison’s directing.
There is a message behind the laughter, coming from Byron’s own experience when “I plunged into internet dating myself, and when the first person I met was so obviously not what his profile described”. It’s not just so many men who misrepresent themselves and fail to understand that women are equal, but she has also to learn to see herself for what she really is and really wants.
Can she find this through profiles, email, Photoshopped images, going to movies, risking alarm bells ringing in her head at “parties”. LoL, of course not.
But, laugh out loud as we do, it’s in real life that she finds what she needs – and we are glad for her.
And we appreciate Annie Byron’s precise acting skills which bring this story to life. If you come without a SoH, you’ll surely find one in this hour and a quarter show.