Wanna feel really old really fast?!  Well, here you go: It’s been 29 years since Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise was the number one song on the radio; the small screen was ruled by the TV shows Seinfeld, ER, and Friends; and William Jefferson Clinton was President.  What else happened in 1995? Well… Match.com became the first popular website for the then-new phenomenon known as “online dating”.  As anyone who has played the centuries-old “dating game” throughout history already knows, it has never been easy to find Mr., Ms., or Mx. Right.  In the words of that great country-western philosopher Crystal Gayle back in 1981, “Too many lovers, Not enough love these days!”  Could the new technology change things?  Let’s ask thirty-something New York City native “Rachel Yardley”, the leading lady of performer/playwright Antonia Kasper’s autobiographical one-woman comedy 45 Coffee Dates (In search of my soulmate through cyberspace & beyond!), now enjoying a short run at New York City’s Out of the Box Theatre.

So… just HOW challenging was computer dating for our Ms. Yardley?  According to Kasper’s memoirs on which she based her play, it was VERY challenging.  Kasper’s Rachel came from the tiny town of Chickasha, Oklahoma to (drumroll please…) become a Broadway star.  When we first meet her, she is working as a massage therapist and living in a tiny sixth-floor walkup in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.  Things took an optimistic turn when the 39-year-old Rachel decided to enter the world of (drumroll again, please...) online dating!  Listening to her stories, especially the one about the first man she met, seems amusing in retrospect; “TinMan42” was her very first “internet date”– and let’s just say that our heroine didn’t exactly have beginner’s luck.  (“It’s officially a dead date”, she declared early on.)  Another potential love interest was named “PhilanthroJock”– who was, to be as polite as possible, “vertically challenged”.  Rachel wasn’t so upset about his height as much as the fact that he wasn’t honest lied outright about being 5’10”.  (“As I was getting closer, he wasn’t getting bigger!”)  After giving up before the possibility of “The third time’s a charm.”, she changed her mind and decided to aim for “50 men in 90 days”… but “only for coffee”, hence the title of the play. 

Directed by Austin Pendleton, 45 Coffee Dates proves Antonia Kasper to be a gifted comedian as well as a talented raconteur.  Some of the dialogue– filled with some very modern lexicon that future generations are sure to laugh at (“He IM’d, PM’d, and DM’d me every day!”)– is outright hilarious, as are her uncensored, unapologetic observations on the men swimming in that big ol’ dating pool. One of those observations is “When a man says you’re “classy”, odds are he’s NOT!”  Humor aside, the audience is also given Antonia’s Rachel’s very candid backstory.  The parallels between (1) Rachel’s relationship with her father– which was strained at best and overtly abusive at worst– and (2) her own relationship with men as an adult are startlingly obvious.  It can seemingly be summarized with one revelation late in the play: Rachel’s father waited until his daughter was well into adulthood before ever telling her that she was “beautiful”.   Kasper is also quite adept at playing multiple characters, which comes out when she channels the various over-the-top people from her past.  These include her sister (who still rocks her Oklahoman accent) and her neighbor– a chain-smoking, libidinous wedding singer.    

Will this street-smart princess ever meet her urban prince?  I won’t give away the ending, but I’ll just say that those in the audience routing for Rachel Yardley to “catch that bouquet” will be rewarded for their support at the show’s conclusion– which, incidentally, was a “clap-out-loud” moment for the attendees of Out of the Box Theatre that night.

The (mis)adventures of dating has always been a fertile source of material for all forms of entertainment: movies, TV, books, and theater.  It’s a safe bet that any of us over the age of 30 can spend an enter evening sharing all our dating stores– whether they be fairy tales, horror movies, or a combination of both…  But it takes a charismatic, gutsy performer like Ms. Kasper to make an evening of dating stories into a night of entertainment that’s both smart, bold, and VERY New York.  45 Coffee Dates is just that.

45 Coffee Dates will run for two additional performances: Friday, April 5th and Friday, April 12th, at Out of the Box Theatrics, 154 Christopher Street, #1E, New York, NY 10014. All Showtimes are at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20. For tickets and more information, visit here: Ticket Link.