"Date with Doom" — this one, you can laugh at

We’ve all gone on bad dates — for some, it seems that’s all they’ve had.
That universal premise is the theme behind five one-act plays making up Allen County Community College’s spring offering, “A Date with Doom.”
Never mind that “Doom” is a character’s name, and for that matter, so are Miss Right and Mr. Wrong.
The skits use such simple word play and “we’ve all been there” scenarios to elicit laughter from the audience.
Four of the plays were written by V.B. Leghorn. The titular play was written by former ACCC student Nic Olson.
In it, a jaded reporter, out on her “first date in three years,” waits at a restaurant for the arrival of her blind date. She orders “a martini minus everything but the vodka and the ice, in a much bigger glass.” The waiter politely tells her this is called “vodka on the rocks,” to which she insists “Yeah, but if I order ‘vodka on the rocks’ I don’t get the olive and the girly umbrella.”
Who hasn’t been this persnickety at least once in their life?
Lindsey Jarvis plays the cynical Nora Norris, a reporter for the “Daily Celestial Object.” “The “Daily Planet” was taken,” she said wryly.
She tells the waiter, Paul Minor, her date is “some sort of doctor.” After checking the foyer, he returns insisting she have one more drink.
Turns out her date is a wanna-be super villain.
Dr. Doom is played with a light touch by Paul Vernon. His side-kick, “Neil the henchman,” elicits big laughs when Nora asks him what his special skill is. “I know kung fu!” he states, posing. The audience broke up.
Date with Doom, despite its super-hero context, is filled with realistic characters. Who hasn’t had that bad blind date, or known someone with a weird “side-kick” buddy who always there, just loitering?
Leghorn’s plays were similar.
In “The Sacrifice of Dating,” Nachele Gonsalez plays Leslie, an otherwise happy woman pining for a mate. Debra Francis appears as the whacky fairy-godmother Daria, with plunger instead of wand, and implores Leslie to “Tell me what you want in a man and I’ll deliver.”
As she enters her most desired traits into a dating web site, she quips, “This is great — it’s like ‘Build a Bear,’ only with man parts!”
It’s a hilarious line. Anyone who has lived in a larger city knows, computer dating is de rigueur — and while you might type in your wishes, it’s rarely what you get. But this is theater, and Daria provides Leslie’s perfect man.
After a while, though, the magic wears off. Leslie is disillusioned. “He likes to cuddle,” she complains to her best friend. “And he takes me to dinner every night.”
“McDonald’s?” her friend asks. “No,” Leslie wavers. “Steak and lobster.”
Her friend gives her an appropriate scowl, to which she whines, “But I’ve gained ten pounds!”
“Speed Dating” parodies the popular craze of the five-minute get-to-know-you round-robin style of meeting singles.
One woman queries the man at her table, “If you could be a farm animal, what would you be?”
“How should I know,” he answers, “I’m from Brooklyn.”
“Speed Dating” rapidly shows the obvious differences in some people that make for an incompatible — but funny — match.
“Dating Service” is more about its proprietess, Miss Right, and her inflexibility, than real dating services.
She favors clients who are right-wing, writers, like right whales and Dudley Do-right. When one client writes left-handed, she is booted from the office with the proclamation, “you just can’t be right!’
Soon, however, Miss Right is wooed by Mr. wrong: “Daniel Wrong,” he says, introducing himself.
Mr. Wrong encourages Miss Right to live a little. “You don’t have to be right all the time,” he insists. Like some, though, she insists, “Oh, but I do!”
In “The Dating Game,” a contestant named Lucy walks in off the street. At first confused by the questions she is given to ask, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
“If you could change something about Bachelor No. 1,” she asks, “what would it be?”
“It’s a toss up” replies Bachelor No. 2, “between his looks and his attitude.”
Such zingers fly throughout the plays, and the audience responded with guffaws.
Between each act, the theater bounced with up-tempo “love songs,” if tunes such as the Beatles “Come Together” and Ricky Martin’s “Living la Vida Loca” can be so construed. They mirrored the quirkiness in the plays, reflecting the characters’ somewhat-flawed natures — which of course mirrors the diaspora of personalities found in any community.
If we didn’t relate, we wouldn’t find it funny.