First Date presents an actual first date in real time. Aaron, a nerdy guy who works in the financial district, and Casey, a troubled woman who works in an art gallery, meet in a restaurant for their first date. This odd couple interacts in an unpredictable fashion with flashbacks of other people they’ve dated and getting advice from imaginary characters. In Aaron’s case, Gabe–Aaron’s best friend–appears from time to time to give Aaron advice (and then disappears like imaginary characters do). Casey imagines her sister, Lauren–who is happily married–whenever the conversation comes to a boil. Lauren gives Casey advice which Casey frequently ignores.
First Date: The Musical lasts only 90 minutes. The first date proceeds in sometimes surprising directions until the ending. I liked the songs, which were mostly funny, and I liked the chemistry between the two main characters, Aaron and Casey. First Date: The Musical first showed up on Broadway in 2013, but now it’s making its way around the country in local and regional theaters. If you’re looking for a comic look at the dating scene, I recommend First Date: The Musical. Have you experienced a memorable First Date? GRADE: A-
SONG LIST:
“The One” – Company
“First Impressions” – Aaron, Casey
“Bailout Song #1” – Reggie
“The Girl For You” – Company
“The Awkward Pause” – Company
“Allison’s Theme #1” – Allison
“The World Wide Web Is Forever” – Company†
“Total Loser” – Company††
“That’s Why You Love Me” – Edgy Ex-Boyfriends
“Bailout Song #2” – Reggie
“Safer” – Casey
“I’d Order Love” – Waiter
“Allison’s Theme #2” – Aaron, Allison, Gabe
“The Things I Never Said” – Aaron, Aaron’s Mother
“Bailout Song #3” – Reggie
“In Love With You” – Aaron
“The Check!” – Company
“First Impressions (reprise)” – Reggie, Waiter††
“Something That Will Last” – Casey, Aaron, Company
Sounds awful. I will pass.
Bad first date=about 25 years ago I had a blind date. We met at a restaurant. Talked for a few minutes in the lobby. Went in. Sat down. Ordered dinner. She excused herself to use the restroom and never came back. I never went on a blind date again.
Steve, sorry about that blind date 25 years ago. Just think of the awkward dinner you didn’t have to endure when she bailed out.
Jackie is the one who could give you a couple of memorable first/blind date stories.
This got mediocre reviews on Broadway so we skipped it. As you can see in the picture, Zachary Levi (Chuck, also now in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) starred. It sounds like a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes in summer, however.
Jeff, the BUFFALO NEWS theater reviewer who wrote the review of the local performance of FIRST DATE: THE MUSICAL also saw the play in New York City a few years ago. He said the local version was better. The nearly sold-out audience we saw FIRST DATE: THE MUSICAL with loved the play.
My first date with Phil was odd. He couldn’t find his way to my houe in Philly so he went back home (an hour ride) and called me. So I took a bus and met him at halfway at a bowling alley and then we went out. He managed to drive me home but I always wondered if he found his way home or not. HA. Phil was directionally challenged to the max.
Patti, I love Phil’s persistence and your willingness to meet him halfway! Diane is occasionally directionally challenged. When she and her friend went on a road trip a few years ago, they both missed exits and got lost–even with GPS!
Of course, Jackie doesn’t drive, but beyond that, she has a terrible sense of direction too (for the most part). In the old days, I would give her a map to read to direct me, but if left to her own devices she was not much help. But now she can just type where we want to go into the phone and get the turn by turn directions. It is Nirvana for her.
I, on the other hand, seem to have inherited a great sense of direction from my father. Once I’ve been somewhere once, I can find my way there again, no matter how long it’s been. Driving the small roads (with roundabouts) in Britain was not a problem either. When we drove from London to Rome and back in 1976, both Jackie and our friend (the same friend who almost ruined our marriage) were astonished when I told him exactly where and when to turn to get to our pension at the top of the Spanish Steps. The only place that gives me trouble is the Pentagon/Crystal City area of Arlington. I tend to circle the Pentagon until I find the right road.
Jeff, I can honestly state that I have never been lost. I have a great sense of direction and I can read a map (one of the skills I picked up in ROTC). With GPS, no one should get lost anymore (unless there’s a software glitch).
Oh, I forgot one more. When Jackie met Beth and Maggie in Orlando for an Old Girls Gone Wild trip, they had to call me in Brooklyn for directions!
Jeff, I’m glad the Old Girls Gone Wild crew knew who to call!
John has a great sense of direction. Once he’s visited a place, he can find his way around on subsequent visits. He went to Boston once when he was 16, decades later he could still figure out getting around there (although, naturally, some places had changed or been rerouted due to the big dig, etc.). I, on the other hand, have a terrible sense of direction and, frankly, map apps just add to my anxiety. I think I’ve mentioned before that on not one but two occasions I was taking one of my kids to Metairie (a big suburb west of New Orleans) and ended up on Poydras Street in front of the Superdome! Both times I had to call John who was able to talk me back to the interstate. A couple of years ago, one of our daughters was in Houston for a summer job and we took two vehicles to move her there (one she was keeping in Houston, the other John and I were driving back in). Anyway, he was in one vehicle with our daughter, I was in the other. I missed the exit on the freeway and drove miles out of my way. Again, John had to talk me through the drive to get to Julia’s apartment complex. It took almost an hour, but I made it!
On the other hand, a few years ago we were taking a family trip to Grand Isle at the very southern tip of Louisiana. We’d never been before, so we’re using Google Maps. GM told us to turn right just before a bridge, then to turn left in 400 feet. However, there was nowhere to turn left and to our left was nothing but water. GM should have instructed us to turn left after the bridge! Fortunately, it was daylight and we knew better than to turn left. Had it been nighttime, we might easily have gone into the water had we had unerring faith in Google Maps instructions.
Deb, I have John’s directional tendencies. If I’ve been to a place once, I can usually find my way there again. But, I’m also a big believer in GPS…with some skepticism.
Our first date: we’d known each other for months, had met through friends at college, and hung out in a group for a couple of months. At a New Year’s Eve party/sleepover, we (ahem) got together, but my friend Roy told me (untrue) that Jackie wouldn’t go out with me. (Nice friend, right?) After that was straightened out, our first date was (not surprisingly) the movies. As some of you have heard already, this was the inauspicious choice: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? January 14, 1967. The rest is history.
Jeff, “friends” would try to fix me up on blind dates when I was in my 20s. Although well-intentioned, all of those attempts fizzled. I preferred smart women who liked books, theater, and movies. What I got were dates with women interested in cosmetic surgery, pets (especially cats–my Number One allergy!), and soap operas. And, I knew I was in trouble when a blind date would see the towering stacks of books in my apartment (I was working on my PhD) and would comment, “Gee, you read a lot!”
My late friend Bob Adey had even more books than you do. When people would ask, “Have you read ALL these books?” he had a great answer: “I’m just finishing the last one.”
Jeff, I truly intend to read all the books I own although the math defeats me unless I live to be 300! Bob Adey had a great response! I may have to “borrow” it.
Now I also have to add – my two stories:
50 years ago I had just finished my math studies with a Master but my prof went with all his people to a US university!
So I was “alone”, also wanted to make real money and went into IT.
But still every evening I would go into my favourite bar for a beer or two – because I had my room on the third floor above it.
One evening an old friend of a friend was sitting there alone at “our” table where we all met (in German this is called a Stammtisch) and I went up to her and said hello. She smiled and told me she had again troubles with her husband who wnet to another place and after a few drinks she asked me to take her to a kind of dance club and then …
It was past midnight and she said she didn’t have her car – so I invited her to sleep in my room on the couch (or sofa as we call it). But she immediately came into my bed and you can imagine what happened …
We married three years later – her divorce took a long time.
When cancer took her away from me I was devastated, spent more time than ever in my holiday house in Hungary just to GAFIA. The sweet little town of Hévíz in the neighborhood has a famous spa (with Europe’s biggest thermal lake) and therefor a ot of services like dentists, plastic surgeons, manicure and pedicure etc which the tourists enjoy.
a few years after my wife’s death I went to a pedicure and the lady who had also treated my wife asked me whether I had a new girlfriend and when I said no she told me she had the perfect woman for me at which I laughed of course – who wants an old geezer like me?
But she insisted and in the end I agreed to a meeting in my favourite restaurant with our “coupling lady” accompanying us – because “the perfect woman for me” didn’t speak much German and I didn’t speak much Hungarian.
It was a really nice evening and then I had to drive her home, she lived in an old house in a village – she told me much later she had to move there because her ex-husband went bankrupt and she too lost everything.
And when we said goodbye (no kissing …) I asked her in my limited Hungarian whether she had enjoyed the evening, she said . And when I asked her if she would like to meet me agains, she said yes.
Then I asked: Mikor? (when) and she answered:
Holnap! (tomorrow)
So the next evening I went to the boutique where she worked, treated her at my little house to a cold dinner and then …
It was early January, rather cold so I had prepared the fireplace in the living room. When we went there she said: It’s really warm in here, smiled at me and took off some clothes and then …
I had prepared for this like Bob Dole – you know what I mean.
From that night we stayed together – now more than 12 years.
Btw we were both already over 60 years old when we met, but she looked much younger to me.
I could tell more stories like:
When we went to the restaurant I opened my car’s door for her and when she went in – she got a big kiss from my dog, a mix of German and Belgian shepherd!
She said: Oh, what a nice dog – what’s its name?
From the first moment my dog Alexa was her best friend …
Of course that could have played differently – I had assumed our friend would have told her about my dog, but no. And of course she might have said “Take that filthy animal away from me!” or the dog might have been aggressive to her …
now there are more crazy coincidences: Like me she’s totally a-religious, she likes SF&Fantasy (seeing books by Asimov and George Martin in her bookshelf was already a point for me), Jazz and Rock and Blues (we’ve been to concerts by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and Joe Bonamassa together) – and she like the USA!
We went there several times for a holiday (Miami Beach for a start, NYC and Niagara Falls, the West Coast from San Francisco via Yosemite to Death Valley, Grand Canyon and Vegas) – the last round trip was to the South, from Florida (Space Center and Orlando) via Hilton Head Island and Charleston to Nashville where her nephew is a physics prof at Vanderbilt …
Happy days are here again … 🙂
Wolf, you have had incredible luck with women!
Great stories, Wolf! As George said, you’ve had some wonderful luck.
Thank you both! Yes, I was very lucky, but I didn’t have dates with too many women.
Either I was too selective or not too many girls were interested in a mathematician?
You could call me a serial monogamist.
Wolf, between the ages of 19 and 29 (when I married Diane) I dated about 100 women. I found out few women were interested in a doctoral student who survived on a University of Wisconsin stipend so things ended after one date. The women doctoral students in my program were either married or engaged to be married.
John’s and my first date (1986): we rented videos from the precursor to Blockbuster—Paris Texas, This Is Spinal Tap (which I’d seen, but he hadn’t), and a Robin Williams stand-up show. Then we walked to the corner store and got ice cream. Never did finish watching Paris Texas, but loved the other two. Not quite “the rest is history” because we continued to date other people until early 1987. THEN the rest was history.
Worst blind date (which I rarely went on for precisely this reason) the guy with whom I shared a mailbox in college—back then they had to double-up because the mailboxes were limited. This was about 1978/79. Anyway he called me and asked me out. I guess he’d seen my name on the mailbox and looked me up on the student directory. It was awful! He kept talking about how great he was in bed (ugghh!) and asking me to rub his feet (gag!)—among other things. I couldn’t wait for that date to end. I told family not to send me anything else by mail because I didn’t know if this crazy m-f would steal my mail (he gave me that vibe). Somehow I was not surprised when I went to check my mail a few weeks later and I saw he had a letter from (I kid you not) the Penthouse Forum! God, I really dodged a bullet with that one.
Deb, you did dodge a bullet from that Penthouse Forum Guy!
I once dated a woman who was astonished when I admitted I had never been camping. I have a lot of allergies so I stay inside most of the time with the A/C. This woman took me shopping at a camping store and I bought a sleeping bag while she bought a new tent. Then, the next weekend, she drove me to the middle of the wilds Wisconsin. She set up the tent and fixed a delicious meal over a campfire. The next morning, after breakfast, she took me on a 15-mile hike. It was a hot and muggy day. I fought off swarms of bugs. That night, I couldn’t sleep because of animals howling in the dark.
The next day, after breakfast, she packed up the tent and drove me back to my apartment in Madison, Wisconsin. As soon as I opened my door, I fell to my knees and kissed the carpet. I took a shower, doused myself with hydrocortisone on my many insect bites, and fell into a deep sleep with the A/C turned up to the max. Later that week, I met with this woman for lunch and said, “You are a very nice person, but I don’t think I could survive a relationship with you.”
Jackie wants me to tell our one and only camping story. I had been to summer camp for six years, went on overnight horseback trips and slept out under the stars many times. She hadn’t. She had friends with camping equipment they wanted to get rid of, so against my better judgment I agreed to buy a tent. We went upstate and I set it up and not long after it started raining, and raining, and…can you say monsoon? It kept getting worse and worse and eventually we had to give up and go stay at her parents’ bungalow in the Catskills. We gave the tent and other stuff to Jackie’s younger sister and her husband, who were much more the outdoor types.
Jeff, that trek to the Wisconsin wilds was my one and only camping trip. Ironically, Patrick and Katie and their friends camped many times…and borrowed my high-end sleeping bag. That sleeping bag provided years of great service so it was worth the price I paid. Now, I think the sleeping bag resides in Patrick’s apartment in San Jose.
Penthouse Forum! Bwahahahahaha! Great story, Deb.
Up until that moment, I’d honestly believed those Forum letters were all fictional, pulled wholesale out of the brain of Bob Guccione (“The Dark Lady of Porn” per Gore Vidal) and his minions. It never occurred to me that people—particularly young people, as we were at that time—would submit letters to them (or get replies!). But after spending a very unwilling 90 minutes in this guy’s presence, I could see how, if anyone was going to send a letter to the PF, it would be him. It was an old cliche/joke, but all the letters to PF inevitably began, “I never thought this would happen to me, but….”
Deb, PENTHOUSE FORUM was a hot commodity in the all male dormitory I resided in before I moved to an apartment in Madison. Guys bragged they sent letters to PENTHOUSE FORUM and they got published!
This sounds like 90 minutes of torture. Don’t recall any blind dates.
Rick, FIRST DATE invites the audience to share the date with the two characters. Some of date is funny, some is sad. The audience sees two vulnerable people try to make a connection despite the odds against them.
I had a blind date with a woman who’d recently left the Army. Over dinner she told me she was setting up a housecleaning service. I told he about my job with the Air Force. On the way to her car she said, “Well, this has been a nice evening and I think you’re a nice guy, but I want to meet a professional man,”
I said, “You clean peoples’ shitters for a living and you’re looking down your nose at my work?”
End of a lovely evening.
Bob, I encountered a similar situation when I was a doctoral student. Some women were looking for a guy with a “good job” and a good paycheck, not a student living on coolie wages.
As for directions, I’ve been hunting many times and never had a problem finding my way back to my truck. But even after 40 years in Tacoma I still take a wrong turn sometimes.
Bob, I’m always surprised by the stories of hikers who get lost and the teams of searchers who have to find them in the wilderness.
In the first one, it should be “I told her,” not he!
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