In Tandem Theater opens Neil Haven’s new satire Thursday

 

Neil Haven’s new The Playdaters sounds like a typical romantic comedy: For their own amusement, two guys exploit dating sites to spring competitive pranks on each other and on unsuspecting women. On one date, for example, the guy must consume a flask of whiskey without the woman noticing.

The two guys have lots of fun behaving like the affable louts in beer commercials until — wait for it — one guy gets a serious about one of the girls.

Hi-jinks ensue. In the movies, happily-ever-after would also ensue. But not so fast; Playdaters, which opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (Aug. 26, tickets $10) at In Tandem Theatre, isn’t your typical romantic comedy.

“The difference is that these guys know they’re living in a romantic comedy,” Haven said, over coffee Tuesday. “They can snap their fingers and freeze time and freeze the girls. It’s a satire on romantic comedies and on buddy comedies. One of the guys wants to stay in the fantasy of the romantic comedy. The other doesn’t.”

Playdaters, in part, is a particular a response to Knocked Up, Judd Apatow’s hit 2007 film. Beneath the zaniness, Haven sees wrongheaded social pressure to couple up and marry, and pretty much anyone will do.

“Knocked Up is about a fun, immature guy and an uptight woman,” Haven said. “The happy ending is that they get married and he gets a job in a cubicle. We all walk out of the theater smiling. But hey, he’s still immature and she’s still uptight. They’ll be divorced in three years.”

Haven says his play is a critique of that sort of thing. But he intends to make you laugh for 50 minutes while he makes his point.

“It’s a meta-romantic comedy,” he said. “I’m playing with the formula. But it’s also a zany, off-the-wall farce, satire in the spirit of South Park.”

Haven, 27, grew up in Whitewater watching the likes of South Park. He’s the first to say that pop culture courses through his artistic veins.

“I wasn’t reading Shakespeare and Ibsen when I was a kid,” he said. “It was comics and Looney Tunes, the Simpsons.”

On the other hand, he does have a BA in acting from UW-Whitewater and a recently completed an MFA in playwrighting  from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. In December, he’ll start a four-month stint in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at a repertory company in Mesa, Arizona. Also on Haven’s Shakespeare credits sheet: a role in Optimist Theatre’s The Tempest in Milwaukee this summer.

Haven is spending the Vegas/Mesa interim in Milwaukee, which he considers his home, working on Playdaters and on a new project, Pink Champagne. Uprooted Theater and the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center will stage Champagne in full in May. Playdaters will be Haven’s sixth play produced or read publicly in Milwaukee. As five occurred in the last six months, you could say Haven’s hot in Milwaukee. He credits Angela Iannone and Jim Butchart, two of his teachers at UW-Whitewater, for introducing him to Milwaukee’s theater scene.

“I was very keen to move back to Milwaukee after Las Vegas,” he said. “It’s big enough that you can have a career, but small enough that you can get to know just about everyone. It’s a welcoming theater community. Other MFA students didn’t have the advantage of the network of actors that I have. I can buy some beer and get Equity actors to sit in my living room and read for me, with designers and directors there, too. A playwright sitting by himself in a room is really just a poet. Theater happens when people get together and start talking.”

Haven will act in Playdaters, with UNLV pal Jeremiah Munsey, who helped develop his character, and Elizabeth Shipe and Karen Estrada. They will run the show four times in three days at In Tandem’s Tenth Street Theatre through Saturday (Aug. 28). Then they will move on to the Chicago Fringe Festival Sept. 1-5, where Playdaters will be one of 40 short plays selected by lottery. Proceeds of the Milwaukee run will help cover the cost of the Chicago effort.