‘Empathy School & Love Story’ Plumbs the Varieties of Loneliness
Ben BrantleyApril 22, 2016: Because theater is an inherently social form, most plays are date shows — capital-E events that you want to attend with someone else, so you can rehash the pleasures and problems of them afterward. But there are also those rarer plays to which you to want to go solo, works that make you savor the pleasures of being solitary. Take “Empathy School & Love Story,” the writer and director Aaron Landsman’s engaging diptych on varieties of loneliness, which runs through April 30 at the Abrons Arts Center. Made up of two monologues (but of course), it’s an ideal single-ticket show, perfect for pondering on a quiet walk home by yourself, especially on a spring night in Manhattan that draws out those ephemeral human butterflies called New Yorkers. Yes, you’ve been part of an audience for a while, all of you looking at the same people in the same place. But even though the evening’s first offering has us briefly joining hands with the nearest strangers (it only hurts a minute), the production is dedicated to the perspectives of outsiders who never completely connect with anyone else.
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