For the Love of Chekhov (The Dating Game)
Oran Mor, Glasgow Mary Brennan
A MIDDLE-AGED man, a bit crumpled round the edges, sits by himself at a table where a bottle of wine (unopened) and two glasses suggest he’s there to meet someone. A mini-skirted woman – determined not to look middle-aged – sweeps by, without giving him a second glance. On her return, she pauses and – in tones that could strip varnish from the table – says “It’s not you, is it?”
It is. Mitch (Matt Costello) and Francis (Pauline Knowles) are strangers brought together through an online dating site that encourages clients to post hyped-up personal descriptions rather than everydayordinary truths. It’s this mis-match, and the ensuing disappointment, that fuels the sharp-toothed comedy in playwright AS Robertson’s two-hander – directed by Beth Morton and presented in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts. More wounding caustic punchlines follow that opening blow by Francis.
Mitch, however, is soon giving as good as he gets, his barbed remarks about her age and appearance meanly masquerading as honesty.
In fact, neither character has disclosed details of their messy personal lives – and they both have seriously selfish agendas.
He’s desperate to show his scornful, domineering ex-wife that he’s hooked a classy new partner, she’s desperate to get pregnant before her biological clock stops ticking. Suddenly, as the wine flows, first impressions dissolve under the influence of mutual expediency.
Knowles’s Francis envelops Mitch like a boa constrictor, he buys into her fantasy image of him as a stud with top notch genes and our disbelief is rocketing skywards even before their vain attempts at literary kudos locate Chekhov ... well, not penning scripts by the Black Sea. It ends abruptly, around the 40-minute mark – like the first half of something longer that’s still in development, puzzling out Mitch and Francis’s unlikely relationship.