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.
The characters in Shit. Meet. Fan., however, are more annoying than unnerving. And, unfortunately, predictable. (Though the actors, especially Tillman and Messing, do their darnedest to create a bit of mystery.) As for the twist at the end—which is taken from the Genovese movie, and which we won’t reveal here—it feels like an easy way out. Something, say, a long-running TV show might do.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
MCC Theater World Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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