Here’s the game… Phones Out. Face Up. Volume High. Every text, every email, every call must be shared aloud. That’s what a group of long-time friends gather to play on the night of the eclipse. With the cocktails flowing among grownups who refuse to grow up, outrageous secrets and skeletons begin to emerge… SHIT. MEET. FAN. Are they ready for the ensuing chaos? Are you?
The mayhem unfolds in real time in this World Premiere uproarious new satire written and directed by Tony Award nominee ROBERT O’HARA (SLAVE PLAY, MCC’S BLKS, BOOTYCANDY).
Shit. Meet. Fan.’s ostentatious awfulness just comes off as incurious and hacky. Is it any surprise that the few shreds of humanity and solidarity in the play will almost always be displayed by Logan and Hannah, the two members of the group who aren’t white? Or that they’re the only ones able to walk out of the flaming wreckage with some dignity intact? What exactly is revelatory at this point about “Men Suck,” “White People Suck”? Honestly, I might still pause for “Rich People Suck,” but the play is more interested in identity than in economics. In the end, Shit. Meet. Fan. feels almost like some kind of bitter prank: Get a bunch of famous TV actors together and use them to tell the audience “Shame, shame, shame.” What a waste of theater’s tools; what a sour, narrow use to put them to.
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.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
MCC Theater World Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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