Strategic Love Play: Danny Gavigan and Bligh Voth – Photo: Christopher Mueller
Tell us if you’ve heard this one before: a single guy and a single lady both walk into a bar, and sit down for a first date that does not go well. That’s the extent of the setup for the droll, very modern romance Strategic Love Play by English writer Miriam Battye (HBO’s Succession).
A lighthearted yet occasionally caustic look at “the perils and ridiculousness of dating in the age of swiping,” as director Matthew Gardiner put it on press night, the play takes place entirely inside the bar where the Man (Danny Gavigan) and the Woman (Bligh Voth) meet for their date.
With walls of fiery burnt orange, accented by blazing LED light strips, Paige Hathaway’s bar set resembles some kind of hotbox interrogation room, an appropriate venue for the not-quite romantic ritual of prying and probing over a few small beers.
Although “probing” might be too polite a word to describe the Woman’s tenacious approach to grilling her date for his vital info. She arrives eager to cut through the BS, and plunge straight to the bottom of figuring out this stranger.
Let’s decide quickly whether or not this can be something real. Let’s bypass “getting to know you,” and simply be known to each other. Who could blame her, given all the rampant game-playing and gaslighting involved with dating via apps, for wanting to force truth out into the open as early as possible in the relationship — even if that truth isn’t nice or charming.
She insists she’s not concerned about being nice or charming, anyway, opting instead for blunt and brazen, a bracing combination solidly delivered by Voth. Like her character, she arrives seemingly well-assured of how she wants to play this potentially off-putting, mercurial character, who, possibly despite herself, is indeed charming.
The Woman’s also funny, flawed but fine with her imperfections, and prone to asking the Man to say or do his worst to see if she can take it. Or, is it to get any potential meanness out of the way? The joke here, repeated often, is that she’d prefer the pain up front, sooner rather than later, and she’s prepared to return the favor. “I wanna tear someone apart.”
So, maybe not everyone would want to be with her, but she’s a fascinating date, nevertheless, and certainly moreso than the Man, who describes himself as a “nice, normal guy.” That’s our hint that bubbling beneath his “smiley boy” façade, she might find a vibrant spirit to match her own.
That hint doesn’t turn into much, though, and Gavigan, while drily funny in the role, appears less assured of how to bring this more introverted character out of his shell.
Over the course of their date, the Woman does practically badger the Man into revealing his true feelings and character. We’re meant to see facets emerge that might surprise us or alter our expectations of where their encounter might lead.
To some small degree, the temperature constantly shifts in their date — he’s ready to end it, she’s ready to end it, they don’t see potential, they’re both sensing potential — but Battye’s script offers few fresh insights or juicy surprises to accompany the pair’s mating dance.
Their pas de deux remains a simple back-and-forth exchange, staged like a debate with the two seated across from one another at a high-top cocktail table.
Yet, Gardiner and his cast do well to spin from the gossamer plot what feels like a complete and rounded story, thanks in large part to Voth’s well-calibrated performance in the play’s final moments, bringing home, with feeling, the vulnerability entailed in opening your heart to a stranger.
Strategic Love Play (★★★☆☆) runs through Nov. 9 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Avenue, in Arlington, Va., with Pride Night performances on Oct. 17 and 24. Tickets are $47 to $102. Call 703-820-9771, or visit www.sigtheatre.org.
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