A Year of Dating

The publicity shot for A Year of Dating in the Midsumma Program shows delicate female fingers feeling (probing?) the petals of a rose.  The iconography is clear enough.  The show, however, is anything but delicate.  It tells of twelve dates, ranging from the merely dull to the outrageously gross.

Uni student Holly (Seon Williams) is looking for ‘The One’ – or at least love.  She’s curious, a risk-taker and up for just about anything.  She decides to try on-line dating.  Her flatmate, studious, stay-at-home virgin Hannah (Emma Jevons), is sceptical – as well she might be. 

The play consists of either Holly’s post-date graphic accounts of her dates or, with some virtuoso direction from Lyall Brooks, segueing between past and present, and with Emma Jevons taking on the role of the date in question.  Here, Jevons reveals an amazing versatility – from naïve housemate to bogan mansplainer or whatever. 

Holly’s accounts are funny, matter of fact, extremely frank and detailed, with no evasive euphemisms, and wince-makingly believable.  When Hannah is simply Holly’s audience, her reactions are as interesting – and funny – as Holly’s experiences – both hetero and homo.  The vignettes, when Jevons plays the date, are even funnier.

Our audience was about 90% female, almost certainly drawn by the subject matter, and reactions were audible.  There was the wry laughter of recognition, there were often sharp intakes of breath, and there were murmurs of shock or disgust.  Holly never downplays her disappointments or her humiliations – she just shrugs them off – or pretends to - much to Emma’s incredulous annoyance and horror. 

What’s interesting and sad, under the humour, is how many times Holly finds herself just going along with boredom, sexism, misogyny, degradation, and ‘bad sex’.  Fortunately, she suffers a sort of violence only once.  More would immediately be unfunny, but the bad sex is bad enough.  It’s all recounted as if this is just normal, par for the course, and can you really expect any better?

Despite A Year of Dating being in twelve parts (each one ending badly with no tag or punchline) with fade-outs dividing them, it’s a very entertaining hour and a bit.  It rockets along, carried by Seon Williams’ charm and her unstoppable exuberance and energy, and Emma Jevons’ comedic skills – their mobile face, clowning and a brilliant talent for physical comedy.  Lyall Brooks’ direction is, I suspect, very detailed and kinetic throughout; he doesn’t waste a moment.  And the last thing we’d want here is to stop and think too deeply – until we’re on the way home.

Playwright Lucy Holz states that all the dates are ‘pulled from [her] real life.’  The mind boggles. 

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Jodie Hutchinson