Happy Hour: It's About Love And Sex

Want to do something novel with your Saturday night? Head over to the 45^th Street Theater for the off-off-Broadway hit, “Happy Hour, The Show: Sex, Relationships, and Sometimes … Love.” Written by Joelle Arqueros, it’s an hour-long series of short monologues having nothing and everything to do with love, sex and relationships. The play takes a page out of “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” dips it in PCP and redelivers it as a montage of manic and sometimes unnervingly psychotic comedic acts. While this may sound uncomfortable, rest assured that it can be. Delightfully uncomfortable, that is. Once you’ve downed a few cans of the unlimited number of Pabst Blue Ribbons included in your $25 ticket price, the performance feels more like a gathering of close friends (during college, in an arts-themed campus house) than theater.

Performance artists have finally learned what pizza joints, street carts and diners have known all along – anything is great when you’re trashed. In all fairness, however, director Michael Horn did a good job of molding an amateur cast into a group of fairly effective performers. The script leaves room for a good amount of ad libbing and audience interaction and the actors are quick on their wit. Similarly, in those scenes calling for psychotic intensity, the performances didn’t miss a beat. Only those scenes lacking in shock factor gave way to bad acting; but hey, there’s a reason why you’re not paying $165 a ticket.

Performances are every hour, on the hour, from 8-10 p.m. and are followed by afterparties at nearby bars (we went to Zuni). Buy tickets at the door or online. To guarantee a good time, sit in the front row and don’t be shy about helping yourself to the cooler of Pabst. Heaven knows your ticket price paid for three cases of it.