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Nobody Loves You
If you want to read about a funny, quirky, and meaningful new musical, then you’ve come to the right place! Second Stage Theatre presents: Nobody Loves You! This is my second time frequenting this cozy and quaint performance space, thanks to Alyssa Blumenthal, an intern for the theatre company.
Meet Jeff (Bryan Fenkart), an average guy pouring his heart and soul into his philosophy (ontology) dissertation at the expense of his relationship with girlfriend, Tanya (Leslie Kritzer). They don’t seem to be a match made in heaven, anyway, as he’s a stone-cold academic while she obsessively latches onto the latest reality TV series: Nobody Loves You – a show about finding true love. 
When Jeff begins to analyze the show for what it truly is, Tanya gets upset and leaves him. She plans to find her true love by auditioning for the next season of NLY. Though Jeff realizes how ridiculous this plot is, he decides to win back his ex by signing up for auditions as well. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned – obviously!
Jeff finds himself on the “reality” show with several other contestants, none as “real” as he is and all believing that this show really works. Christian (Roe Hartrampf), Megan (Lauren Molina), Samantha (Autumn Hurlbert), and Dominic (Rory O’Malley) all compete to win the show and fall in love, while Jeff takes the opportunity to find out what is happening behind the scenes and how America is brainwashed into believing that everything on the show is real. Every opportunity he gets is spent with crew member, Jenny (Aleque Reid), avoiding NLY‘s ridiculous competitions reminiscent of the challenges on Big Brother.
As usual, the main love story between Jeff and Jenny isn’t what makes or breaks the musical. I find in most comedies, especially musical comedies, it is the surrounding cast that makes the performance what it is. The cast members on NLY are truly caricatures, as Christian, a firm believer in the Christian faith, falls in love with Megan, a partier and alcoholic. Byron (Heath Calvert) is an extremely superficial television host, who has absolutely no idea what is actually going on around him on his show. All that he is concerned with is his hair and how he looks on camera, constantly performing song-bits as the NLY cast argues and falls in love around him. The audience was hysterical throughout the entire 90 minute performance!
At its core, though, I think this musical comedy is actually a very relevant commentary on pop culture today. Starting in the ’80s with the “Me Generation,” society has been on a downhill, selfish spiral. Everything in life is not just done for yourself, or your 
family, but for the public. Especially now with Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, etc (the list goes on and on), everyone wants to be in the lime light! This phenomenon is trickling down into today’s youth, creating a very unhealthy attitude and outlook towards life. Even our protagonist, Jeff, a man who knows deep down inside that the show he is on is a hoax, can’t get past the fact that he has hundreds of thousands of fans out there in America. He falls prey to the exact thing he despises!
I think the scenic and lighting designers (Mark Wendland and Ben Stanton, respectively) were spot on. Except for some bare furniture here and there, the entire stage was filled with lighting and projections to create the ILLUSION of grandiosity and substance. This is exactly what the world has come to – illusions and marketing.
Even in writing this blog, there is a part of me that wants to be “discovered” and recognized by someone out there in the world. But in recognizing this momentary lapse of judgment, I realize that I write this blog for me. The content here makes me proud and looking back on it all, helps me realize how much I’ve accomplished academically and culturally. At the most, it’s a great little thing to put on my resume to display my writing skills. What I do from day-to-day is not for the entire world to see, judge, and fall in love with, and hence that’s not what I write about. I may think I have some talent in writing, or at least in processing information and publishing it online, but I have no credentials that make me a celebrity or a god – someone to follow and believe in blindly. I don’t put myself out there as an example of what one should strive to be. Everything in life is a learning experience, even musical comedies that you go to on a Saturday night with your mother. It’s nice to be able to take a little lesson away from a performance you’ve seen, and this is what I’ve learned: we all need to think for ourselves. We don’t need a realistic, almost cynical Jeff to tell us that Nobody Loves You is a sham of a reality show. I think we can come up with that on our own.
Nobody Loves You
Second Stage Theatre/Tony Kiser Theatre
June 22, 2013
Marina B. Nebro