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Still, that first impression when you walk into a theater contains information.
Thus my trepidation upon entering the capacious Newman Mills Theater at MCC for Robert OHarasShit.
Neither in terms of the story OHaras telling nor of the play thats telling it.Shit.
(White women next, by a hair.)
Allow the laughter to indict the audience and lure them into a sense of comfort.
Then let the Shit.
Then theres that audience directive: indict, lure does this kind ofgotchastuff ever really work?
Meanwhile, Peter was the only one not listening.
The kind of easy blanket derision and condemnation thatShit.
Fan.deals in leaves a similar taste in the mouth.
(He never bought a ticket in the first place.)
You know, Rodger, you know half of everything and all of nothing, says Eve.
Later, she compares women to Macs and men to PCs because a PCs is cheap.
And can only do one thing at a time.
(The tech metaphor, like the humor, is 1990s-dated.)
Which is: Eve is about to propose a game.
How many couples would split up immediately if they looked at each others phones?
So some devious entertainment suggests itself.
Everyone puts their phones on the coffee table.
Whatever texts, emails, calls from whatever apps, whatever arrives we share it, declares Eve.
For the next hour.
We dont have any secrets for the next hour.
What rancid, just barely hidden qualities in his buddies will this night bring to the surface?
The premise gives the impression of irresistible, though I could resist it.
Its very entertaining, he went on, in a middlebrow Broadway comedy kind of way.
Is there such a thing as damning with faint prophecy?
Fan.s ostentatious awfulness just comes off as incurious and hacky.
Or that theyre the only ones able to walk out of the flaming wreckage with some dignity intact?
What exactly is revelatory at this point about Men Suck, White People Suck?
In the end,Shit.
What a waste of theaters tools; what a sour, narrow use to put them to.
Fan.is at MCC through December 15.
