The Bad Daters<\/a>, which is having its US premiere at Paradise Factory, but the energy he saves from not overhauling the romantic two-hander genre, he splurges on genuine heart. Still, clocking in around 75 minutes, under Colm Summers\u2019s graceful direction, the play shifts quietly from rom-com into a delicate dual character study.<\/p>\nAs it opens, Wendy (Kate Arrington) makes it immediately clear that her jump from app to IRL dating is all at her sister\u2019s insistence. Liam (Shane McNaughton) is incredibly amiable but stops short of eager. He\u2019s along for the ride, letting Wendy get her borderline-rude jabs in, but he won\u2019t be a doormat. What\u2019s more is he matches her quips with whip-smart wit\u2014an invitation for her to realize you can be clever without being cutting.<\/p>\n
Their shaky first encounter ends with a demand: Liam is to send her a hand-written letter (and find her address on his own), if he\u2019d like a second date. There\u2019s an appealing mystery to Murphy\u2019s characterizations, unpinnable while recognizable. It\u2019s too easy to write off Wendy\u2019s ask as a dismissal, a ridiculous request she knows he won\u2019t match, nor is it a supplication for true love to prove itself through hard work. We know they\u2019ll have to meet again\u2014lest the remaining hour be spent in silence\u2014and Murphy utilizes that knowledge to his advantage, making us lean into each line of dialogue without turning their motivations needlessly obtuse. It all feels very real.<\/p>\n
And reality, insofar as addressing post-2020 life, does seep into the play, in the form of Wendy\u2019s obsessive use of hand sanitizer. It is, of course, a quick visual metaphor for her aversion to intimacy (and quite funny, too), but Murphy also makes it a lingering COVID-19 phantom. When Liam calls her out on the habit, she says she can\u2019t believe anyone else stopped washing their hands the way we all were a few years back. Whether it\u2019s an excuse, genuine hypochondria, something more psychosomatic, or just another one of her evasions is left thoughtfully unexplored\u2014a grounding in the present that neither ignores nor exploits that global kink in our collective conscience. What matters here is that the habit is part of her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bad DatersDerek MurphyParadise FactoryApril 23\u2013May 17, 2026New York Two strangers meet for a first date. They\u2019re mismatched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1149,3458,3457,3459,3456,2878,98,3461,3462,100,99,3455,17,1117,3465,749,2538,9,3463,24,63,3460,3464,905],"class_list":["post-222031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-art","tag-art-books","tag-art-critic","tag-art-reviews","tag-artists","tag-books","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-art","tag-brooklyn-culture","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-contemporary-art","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-art-scene","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-phong-bui","tag-poetry","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}