A wonderful short play that expertly breaks the fourth wall. A play that leaves you grappling with reality. Sherman has created a fascinating scenario and leaves you guessing the whole time.

This intelligent, harrowing, but ultimately hopeful metatheatrical play is a powerful vehicle for changing lives and perspectives. The framing makes it clear that the audience is part of the performance, but the unspoken contract - of dining in restaurants, of the theatre - makes them simultaneously spectators and complicit bystanders. As a reader or audience member, you will be forced to interrogate which character you believe and why and will leave the theatre with that realization at the top of your mind. This will certainly spark necessary and important conversations between audience members and help many women feel seen. Fantastic.

More harrowing for its quotidian nature than the excesses of genre horror. THE LAST DATE is intrinsic to our lives. Mind manipulation, psychic identity theft, gaslighting - all seem more prevalent these days. And that Alyssa fights free subtly reinforces that she might not have. In particular, I love the way EGS handles the spilt wine, the fourth-wall dynamic, and that the play would seamlessly move into a talkback. A comparison with “The Pain of My Belligerence” by Halley Feiffer comes to mind, but this is briefer and more honestly human in its outrage.