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A Less-Than-Mad Tea Party |  Natascha Girgis, Garett Ross, and Vanessa Sabourin put the kettle on in Between Yourself and Me.

Between Yourself and Me opens with a spotlight on Amy Mathias, who is onstage at a jazz open mic night, in the middle of performing a song adapted from Alice in Wonderland. After it’s finished, and the applause sound effect fades away, Amy (Vanessa Sabourin) begins to confess to the audience that her life is starting to feel a lot like Lewis Carroll’s book—only she feels less like Alice and more like the White Rabbit, creating as many new problems as solutions to old ones. Then she smiles at the floor, suddenly self-conscious, and says she’s going to move onto something “a little less literary.”
It’s worth unpacking that remark, because, innocent as it may seem, those four words neatly sum up the fatal flaw of David Belke’s 2001 Fringe Festival hit, newly revived here by director John Hudson and Shadow Theatre. Essentially, Amy is worried that referencing Alice in Wonderland—which is not only a children’s book, but among the most well-known children’s books of all time—is too complex, too intellectual for her audience. What she doesn’t realize (and neither does Belke’s script, Hudson’s direction, or even C.M. Zuby’s set design) is that she’s not nearly as clever as she thinks she is; the allusions that she imagines flying over our heads are in fact ramming us on the bridge of the nose, making our eyes water with a combination of irritation and embarrassment.
Between Yourself and Me tells the story of Steven Tudor (Garett Ross), a nerdy and borderline-agoraphobic index writer, who, with the help of his best friend and self-proclaimed romance expert Amy, decides to venture “down the rabbit hole” into the “Wonderland” of dating. He takes out ads in the personals section, goes on several disastrous blind dates, and carefully studies his dog-eared copy of Dating for Dummies—all before realizing he may be in love with Amy, and vice versa.
If that premise sounds at all familiar, it should. Aside from being a rough paraphrase of almost every episode of Friends, Belke’s script seems equally cribbed from early Woody Allen films, specifically 1972’s Play It Again, Sam (which itself started out as a play). As a result, Ross’ performance as Steven is commendable simply for the fact that he never comes across as simply a taller, less Jewish photocopy of Allen’s Allan Felix. His paralyzing awkwardness, though painful to watch, is convincing enough to make you root for him throughout, and becomes all the more endearing when compared to Sabourin’s Amy, who seems to get louder, more boisterous, and less likable as the show progresses.
Rounding out the cast are Natascha Girgis, who plays all four of Steven’s blind dates, and George Szilagyi as the gruff, mustachioed superintendent Mr. Flores. Girgis has by far the least enviable role—she has to play a string of brutal stereotypes, including a writhing, stone-faced jazz beatnik—but she brings a welcome dose of warmth to Bonnie, the library assistant who becomes Amy’s biggest competition for Steven’s affections.
As for Szilagyi (who was just seen in a very different capacity in Michael Peng’s The Elephant Man), he steals the show outright whenever he thumps onstage, waving a wrench and getting drawn against his will into the minutiae of Steven and Amy’s problems; he’s a constant reminder of how much fun stock characters can be in the right actor’s hands.
There are many reasons why Between Yourself and Me should not have been revived for another run, but failing to win over its audience is not one of them. The crowd I saw it with was completely smitten by all of Belke’s tricks: they whooped, cheered, and yelled out their own answers to Steven’s rhetorical questions. Could this play be any more trite? (“No!”)