Boy Gets Girl
Theater UCF
by Rebecca Gilman
directed by Cynthia White
starring Amanda Anne Dayton, Aaron Glogowski and Joseph Edward Herr
Bad dates are common enough, but this one REALLY went downhill. Theresa (Dayton) reluctantly met with Tony (Glogowski) for drinks but saw nothing promising in him. He, on the other hand, became obsessed and now sends unwanted flowers, phone calls, and messages that grow increasingly scary. Her editor Howard (Herr) and co-worker Mercer (Orlando Lopez) do what they can to protect her, but her ditzy secretary Harriet (Karissa Dumbacher) is leaking secrets to the enemy. Life becomes so hellish, she’s forced to changer her name, her city, and her profession. And what can the police do? Damn near nothing. Officer Beck (Reva Stover) offers helpful advice, none of which really helps much at all.
What we have here is a brilliantly assembled psycological chiller. Theresa’s decent into madness begins small step after small step, and after the opening scenes, we never see Mr. Glogowski again, yet he looms over everything. Dayton comes across as a workaholic with little interest in dating, and her first date with Tony telegraphs “run away!” clearly. Siegel and Stevens are uber nice guys; they deal with her collapsing life like two real menches, and Stover is a friendly professional, and never a bearer of good news. There’s badly needed comic relief–Mark Brotherton plays breast obsessed film maker Les Kennkat, as good a replica of Fred Olen Ray as I’ve ever seen. While he may appear to be the classic sexist casting couch jockey, deep down he’s a man good at one thing and one thing only, and it’s just a bit out of date in today’s post-feminist world. This is a real gem in the UCF calendar, and tickets are hard to come by, but get out to it if possible, and never give out your phone number on the first date.
