I went into this hoping for something that felt like the New York Times’ Modern Love column. The concept of love is so broad that I was excited for the possibilities that might be explored in this work.

The best vignettes are, in my opinion, the shortest: sub-30 second wordless scenes of subtle expressions of love for another.

However, just about every scene with words are embarrassingly derivative. At best, this feels like the playwright was writing teen sitcom dialogue, both artificial and cliche. At worst, this feels like a teen’s writing exercise performed by a high school drama class, lacking the depth of life experience to write compelling and complex work. I was genuinely shocked by how predictable and unoriginal the dialogue was.

One memorable monologue over the phone was written in such an unusual way as to not sound like a real person talking. It felt like the playwright was speaking through the character with what they wished they had said in that situation, making for a weirdly stilted and moralizing scene.

The show opens with overlapping audio of people taking, as if to suggest this collection of scenes will explore a diverse range of experiences with love. This is demonstrably false. Of the scenes of romantic/sexual love, only a handful are of queer love. Of those, a couple are discussions of an absent “they” character; I personally don’t think you can count a mentioned character who isn’t even on stage as a queer presence. One other is a monologue about a gay couple getting an STI, and another is a scene of a queer woman’s unrequited love for her female (presumed straight) friend. These narratives are stereotypical and overwhelmingly negative; there is no exploration of the joy or complexities of queer love.

Likewise, this show could’ve been a slam dunk of diverse casting considering that there are four actors in the ensemble who move through various roles that could be any race. To talk about the diversity of love and not address mixed-race relationships, non-White cultural experiences of dating, or really anything that’s not White, straight size, heterosexual love feels very dated in 2026.

There was also product placement in two of the scenes, which just felt awkward and shoehorned in. There’s nothing quite like being jarred out of a play by the thought, “Is this an ad?”

Overall, nothing in the performances could sell this script to me. I neither felt entertained nor moved. Every emotion felt muted by the insincerity of the dialogue. When I come to an independent play by a local artist, I don’t come to hear sentences that belong in a cliche rom-com. I come to hear something original, something that surprises me or speaks to some kernel of truth about the human condition. Playwrights, I beg you to stop letting TV and film dialogue poison your work. Write something real.