Dream, Sleep, Connect review: Romantic comedy struggling to make big statements about the digital era

A singleton working in big data searches for a date to his office party, in Rosemary Jenkinson's new comedy. 

Lyric Theatre - Naughton Studio, Belfast

★ ★ 

Has Rosemary Jenkinson, playwright of C21 Theatre’s new comedy Dream, Sleep, Connect, decided to play it safe? Her extraordinary satire Michelle & Arlene threw Northern Ireland’s political leaders into a boozy weekend together, to hash out the state’s bitter controversies. Look closely, and you would have recognised Dario Fo’s farcical portraiture. 

Jenkinson leads the field in such skewering portraits. The empty-headed arts minister in her comedy Here Comes the Night, for instance, was seen making typically unwise and reckless decisions. There’s a surprising change in direction, then, in seeing her write something as familiar as a romantic comedy.

Old formulae are being followed here. The central character Chris, intelligent but socially clueless, is a computer programmer in a white-collar environment. He is surrounded by people - in the usual fetishisation of pity - making unsolicited comments on his singleness, and nagging him to find someone to bring to the office party.

As Chris, Richard Clements is nicely oblivious, while at the same time understated. It would be a reach to say he leans as far into the intellectual irony as Cary Grant, but he’s still waiting in place for someone like Katharine Hepburn to knock him over. 

That’s where Maria Connolly comes in, playing a delightful gallery of unhinged Tinder dates. “You better not be an axe murder,” says one of them, cautious but choosey. She sizes up his arms and sinks into disappointment. It’s a nice reversal of the genre’s usual gender priorities, of women being thin and seeking male approval.

Under Stephen Kelly’s punchy direction, the production zips from one gag to the next. Chris’s Tinder profile, seen in Conor McCormick’s quirky audio-visual effects, is set up with temptation to embellish. He weighs up lying about his age, and types in excruciating clichés. (“College? The University of Life”). 

Jenkinson is talented at such satire, but the plot doesn't land inasmuch as it crashes down. Chris begins to get close with Cora (another sociopathic turn from Connolly), whose paranoia and jealousy spurs her to spy on his Tinder profile. At the same time, his employer assigns him the job of monitoring the social media accounts of disability fraud suspects. 

A sad subplot involving a financial scam, and the overarching possibility of surveillance being used to resolve the Brexit border, rounds off the play’s concerns about technology being used to intrude on people’s lives. But these are summed up benignly, with frustratingly little impact. Such big statements require more conclusive pot shots. 

Run ended.