There comes a time in some adults’ dating lives when the search for love slides down the priority list, and with it the pesky urge to be particular about who might qualify as life-partner material.
What’s far more vital, suddenly, is simply to couple up — less as a bulwark against the world than as a defense against the paired-off friends who fret about your singleness. So what if you and your new plus-one aren’t besotted with each other? At least you’re not alone.
This is where Jenny (Heléne Yorke) and Adam (Michael Zegen) find themselves in “Strategic Love Play,” Miriam Battye’s slightly dark, not-quite-romantic comedy at the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Directed by Katie Posner for Audible Theater and Chase This Productions, it unfolds over the course of a single rocky date.
For both Jenny and Adam, who evidently matched on an app, the prospect of having a default person to stand with the next time they go to a barbecue is a potently soothing thought. Which is maybe why they persevere through this awkward first encounter in a charmingly lit bar, where sconces hang on the bare brick walls. (The set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, lighting by Jen Schriever.)
Reserved and wary of Jenny’s big personality, Adam wants to bolt pretty much immediately, while Jenny is the kind of person who reacts to silence by trying to rile things up, get a reaction, be outrageous. From his rigid posture, his lack of interest is clear, but she is all about leaning in.
“Two-drink minimum,” she stipulates, meaning he’d better not leave before then. “Anything less would be — rather unmerciful.”
Zegen is best known for playing Joel, Midge’s self-sabotaging jerk of a husband, on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” His Adam isn’t someone you want to root for, either, at least not initially. He’s rude and, as it turns out, in love with someone who has already rejected him.
But both he and Jenny know the awful feeling of being lonely in a crowd — a sense the audience gets from Tei Blow’s sound design, which makes us sparingly aware of the unseen others surrounding these two.
This is a play about that loneliness, and the yearning to fit in. To Jenny, that means maybe finding someone who’s just as exhausted, and just as willing to settle for less than true love.
“I’m not what you want,” she tells Adam. “You’re not what I want. Stay with me.”
As they try on that idea, considering what they’d ask from each other, defenses fall away and warmth seeps in. But there is still something forced about this production — too many moments that feel somehow askew.
Such as when Jenny, curious whether Adam has ever reached “real-life boyfriend” status with anyone, is incredulous when he says yes. This makes more sense in the script, which describes the characters as being “about 30.” But they have been cast with actors who are closer to 40, which is a different stage of life.
Also, Jenny and Adam in this version of the show are New Yorkers, and their accents are American. But the play — well received in Edinburgh last year — is British, and the text is peppered with Brit speak. When Adam mentions bodies “bopping about” during sex, the phrase sounds unnatural for him. When he confesses, “My mouth is so dry. It’s like a dry little bean pot,” Jenny is, implausibly, unfazed.
Possibly most consequential, though, is that this production ignores a fundamental script note about Jenny and Adam: “There is chemistry between them.” Whatever they’re fighting here, it isn’t chemistry.
This is a smart comedy. But in crossing the Atlantic for this new staging, it needed to be treated with greater care.
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