(Courtesy photo/John Salazar)
By CATHERINE DONNELLY
Special to the PRESS
Playwright Theresa Rebeck keeps audiences in stitches with her amusing 2003 release of a daunting one-woman 90-minute soliloquy, “Bad Dates,” directed by JoAnn Evans in this El Paseo Arts production in February.
The part of Haley was played by South Padre Island’s talented Andrea Wright, as she embodied the part of a divorcee in her forties with a 13-year-old daughter named Vera and a jaw-dropping collection of clothing, including 600 pairs of shoes.
After Haley flees her loser husband in Texas, she settles nicely into a rent-controlled New York City apartment. Just that feat alone is worth an explanation because it’s something that even seasoned New Yorkers would find challenging. But, as with most tales, the audience must take a leap of faith.
When the play opens, Haley has taken Manhattan by storm. She waits tables in a high-end restaurant, which she admits was a front for a Romanian mob family’s money-laundering operation. The manager goes to prison when the Feds move in on the crime syndicate, leaving an opening and opportunity for the unlikely waitress Haley, who subsequently rises to the occasion to become the new manager.
After she has the restaurant running like a well-oiled machine, she turns her thoughts to reentering the dating realm.
It’s through the carefully crafted incremental series of bad dates that we find out that Hayley has problems that go way beyond her bad luck with men and the crazed flurry of activity that goes with the simple act of dressing herself.
Hayley goes through numerous different looks while seeking fashion advice from her teenage daughter and both fashion and relationship advice from her gay brother. Under the direction of Evans, Wright invites the audience to see past the attractive middle-aged fashionista in the mirror to the emotional wreck that she is.
The much-lauded shoes occupy every spare corner of Haley’s bedroom and are almost another 600 non-speaking characters in the play. Ironically, many wild shoes she loves but probably never had the occasion to wear no longer fit her as she embraces her middle-aged life.
The wildly disparate emerging outfits manifest Haley’s shaky sense of self. Is she an older matron in the below-the-knee black skirt with the ironically sexy split-up back seam, revealing the sex kitten inside? Or is she the smoking hot enchantress in the snakiest outfit she’s had on in a while? Is she the elegant pair of pumps or the strappy stilettos? Her constant lament is that she’s trying so hard to look sexy without looking like sex work is her actual trade.
Ignore that shoebox she pulls up by accident that is crammed full of cash; however, it foreshadows what is to come. So are each of the dates, so keep your scorecard handy.
As most people know, finding an excellent single partner can take time to find a good single partner to date.
The play’s modus operendi is mostly Haley going through the frantic machinations of dressing to go out on a current date while telling the audience about the last date she suffered through in spectacular ways and her hopes for the exciting new date for the evening. When Haley thinks she may have found her perfect man, the Romanians escape jail to make a surprise reappearance, and her life suddenly unravels.
Wright is a perfect fit for the talkative and warm-hearted Haley. She artfully draws the audience into her confidence as she chatters about shoes, men, relationships, and food.
A must-mention is that a 90-minute soliloquy would be formidable for any equity actor because there is no one to lob lines back and forth to, which is a way to remember lines. The last line gives the actor a clue as to the next one. In a one-person play, the actor has to substitute props as clues to what comes next. Special kudos have to go to any actor who attempts to pull off such a daring feat, which Wright managed with aplomb.
It’s probably ironic that a play called “Bad Dates” is one of the best dates you could happen upon. If the savvy audience pays close attention to what people say, do, and eat as the stressful ritual of dating plays out, they will pick up on the deeper story beneath and the age-old struggles we all go through as we navigate life.
*Reviewed based on the February 21 dress rehearsal and the final performance on February 24 of El Paseo’s “Bad Dates” production on South Padre Island.
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