UP2D8

If we are to believe Laura Shamas then the internet has made dating a very difficult process indeed. In UP2D8 Shamas explores the stories of a number of women caught up in dating (and the internet) in the 21st century.

There’s a range of stories presented in UP2D8, from a PhD student exchanging increasingly suggestive emails to a woman searching an online sperm bank. Shamas repeatedly returns to the discrepancy between what the internet allows us to suggest and the reality that fails to match this. Though the monologues are often comic this central preoccupation tinges them with an air of inevitable disappointment.  

The monologues themselves are somewhat uneven, several lacking punch or real purpose (the inclusion of an academic giving a lecture on love in the internet age seems particularly redundant). Nor is there any guiding principle about the arrangement or connection between stories. Some characters reoccur, some don’t. Sometimes the monologues lead into each other, more often they don’t. It makes for a notably disjointed hour.

The best performances come with the best of the monologues. Nancy Baldwin mines every moment of comedy as a middle aged woman looking online for a younger man. Her sense of hope and excitement giving way to disbelief and a desire for revenge is perfectly played, every word and action made to count.

UP2D8 is more eloquent on its subject matter than its title might suggest but it never quite manages to achieve a coherent, or entirely satisfying, whole.