Oh, the games people play, at least in stage plays like Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, The Boys In The Band and, now, Shit. Meet. Fan., Robert O’Hara’s world premiere dark comedy opening tonight Off Broadway with an impressive and hard-working cast of big-name actors including, for starters, Garret Dillahunt, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski and Debra Messing.
Those names – along with Constance Wu, Tramell Tillman and Michael Oberholtzer – can’t help but raise expectations that, frustratingly, go largely unmet. In other words, Shit Has Close Call With Fan.
Based on Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian film Perfect Strangers, with some significant character changes, Shit. Meet. Fan. unfolds in real time as a gathering of old friends decides to play a dangerous game: Putting their phones on a table, each agrees – some more reluctantly than others, all bolstered by booze and a few by cocaine – to allow the others to read or hear every incoming message over the course of the party. Secrets will be revealed, true (and scathing) feelings surface, and the bonds of marriage and friendship strained to (and maybe beyond) the breaking point.
‘Shit. Meet. Fan.’ cast
Julieta Cervantes
Given a gorgeous production by MCC Theater that features a luxe, beautifully lit New York City loft set (designed by the ever-reliable Clint Ramos) that justly qualifies as real estate porn, Shit. Meet. Fan. brings together a group of longtime friends – mostly affluent, nearly exclusively white, all with secrets – for a lunar eclipse-viewing party that, more importantly, will also serve as an introduction to a newcomer: Logan (Tillman), the sole Black friend, is bringing his new girlfriend to meet the family, as it were.
That the girlfriend doesn’t show, and Logan seems a bit jittery about it, is the sort of hint-dropping that O’Hara (Slave Play) delights in. Some of the clue-dropping pays off, some doesn’t.
The gathering takes place in the humongous and opulently appointed Brooklyn condo (the script describes it, accurately, as “Feng Shui-ed within an inch of its life”) of Rodger (Harris) and Eve (Krakowski), an attractive, professional couple (he’s a plastic surgeon, she’s a therapist). Though they bicker about their 17-year-old daughter Sam (Genevieve Hannelius) – mom is especially anxious and critical of the teenager’s newfound sexual awakening – the couple doesn’t seem particularly George-and-Martha, at least not initially.
The friend group about to arrive consists of Rodger’s old frat brothers and their wives and girlfriends. (Best not to dwell on the 20-year age span among the cast – there will be many more nits to pick over during the next 105 minutes).
Harris and Krakowski
Julieta Cervantes
The characters: Brett (Dillahunt), a lawyer about to face charges on a mysterious and deadly auto accident; Claire (Messing), Brett’s alcoholic and very disgruntled wife; Frank (Oberholtzer), the good-looking and hot-tempered paramedic and bro-est of the bros; Hannah (Wu), Frank’s new bride and the guest least beholden to the longstanding group dynamics; and Tillman’s Logan, a coach at a tony, white prep school whose race seems never to have been an issue with his old pals.
Anyone who has seen playwright and director O’Hara’s Slave Play will suspect that the surface racial harmony masks some serious repression and outright dishonesty. The phone game – thought up by the passive-aggressive Eve (she’s this play’s equivalent to Boys in the Band‘s party host Michael) – will undoubtedly excavate whatever bigotry, racial and otherwise, has been lurking in this group for years.
While Shit. Meet. Fan. certainly has a fair-enough share of laughs to at least somewhat balance the ugliness (the latter including, but not limited to, a not-very-credible casually uttered barrage of homophobic slurs). Without giving away too many spoilers, the secrets that rear their heads during the evening involve extramarital affairs, an unannounced pregnancy, a plot to commit an old lady to a nursing home, a down-low lover, video of a talking vagina app and a fetish or two.
The frat bros
Julieta Cervantes
It’s anyone’s guess why the partiers would continue the game as these skeletons come dancing out of the closet, though a late deus ex machina twist clears things up (don’t watch Genovese’s film if you want to be surprised). Some loose threads stay loose though. How does an ambulance driver and a school coach afford pricy ski vacations? What’s the deal with a quick glimpse of S&M proclivities that gets no further mention?
O’Hara’s rather rote direction does his play no favors, though he gets terrific performances from his talented cast. Messing, in particular, scores in a go-for-broke comedic performance, and Oberholtzer – a late replacement for Billy Magnussen, who dropped out for health reasons – will remind anyone who saw his Tony-nominated performance in Take Me Out just how powerful an actor he is. Wu subtly demonstrates how her Asian character likely has more in common with Logan than the white majority gathered here, and Harris and Krakowski effectively tap into their sitcom roots while adding some sinister undercurrents – a description that, come to think of it, pretty much applies to the play itself.
Title: Shit. Meet. Fan.
Venue: Off Broadway’s MCC Theater
Written And Directed By: Robert O’Hara
Cast: Garret Dillahunt, Genevieve Hannelius, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing, Michael Oberholtzer, Tramell Tillman, Constance Wu
Running time: 1 hr 45 min (no intermission)
