[ssba]
First Date
Reviewed by Myron Meisel
La Miranda Theatre
Through Oct. 11.
First Date, with songs by Alan Zachary & Michael Weiner and book by Austin Winsberg, completed a modest 200-performance Broadway run in 2013, perhaps largely buoyed by the presence of a television star. For the most part, it’s a compendium of stereotypes — dramatic, lyrical, musical — about a pair of characters on the eponymous blind meet for drinks and just maybe dinner, who themselves think and react to one another with assaults of defensive stereotypes about the vaunted difference between the sexes, which largely seem to be true only to the extent the bogus expectations are so deeply held.
To make matters worse, the big cathartic scene actually encourages audience cheering for some blatantly misogynistic aggression — however imaginary — in which an ex-girlfriend of ambivalent memory finally gets her comeuppance because, well, she had it coming.
Having cleared the air, First Date, while banal, is paradoxically neither dismissible as insensitive nor negligible as a musical entertainment. It’s savvier than it pretends, and within its admittedly limited emotional compass and artificial unity of time, often effectively communicates sincere emotions through aptly fashioned songs. Think of it as a curdled yuppie Marty with production numbers that reflect the limited psychological dimensions of the couple with a logical consistency and a sincere desire to please, and First Date emerges a plausible variant for a contemporary zeitgeist that decidedly ought to evolve into something more dated than it yet has.
Perhaps this First Date is so tangibly better than it ought to be because it receives such an alert production with honest professional skill. Given that their personalities are in fact rather unsympathetic, the natural charms of Marc Ginsburg and Erica Lustig don’t compromise the edges but eke out empathy despite them. (Riddle me this: The allegedly virtuous investment banker actually cannot think of a morally bad deed he has committed, and the script — and date — cluelessly let him off the hook.) Similarly, the ensemble makes the most of what are highly contrived interpolations that allow them to carry nearly half the songs and almost all the dancing.
Credit obviously goes to director Nick DeGruccio and his team, who navigate the shoals of this shallow piece with celerity and showbiz smarts. Producing organization McCoy Rigby Entertainment has obvious constraints with its core audience base, and yet within those, displays some genuine daring in testing aesthetic boundaries, and with its homegrown productions so far this year of Carrie and Billy Elliot has impressively gone the extra distance to provide originality and class. In its own, less substantial way, this First Date provides more of that same honorable attention to its mission.
La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada; Wed.-Thurs., 7:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., & Sun., 2 p.m.; through October 11. (562) 944-9801, lamiradatheatre.com. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
