Review : Love Me Tinder – Violet Online Rebooted

Last night #zlotybaby and I saw Love Me Tinder – Violet Online Rebooted, a one woman show starring Lynita Crofford as Violet, at the Alexander Bar. I first became acquainted with Violet’s sexcapdes last year when I saw her first show simply titled, Violet Online, at the same venue. Since then we’ve become quite familiar with Violet’s blog which provides the inspiration for both these productions and she regularly comments (read tells me to delete my Tinder profile) on our blog.

In the second production we continue to follow Violet’s antics as a 40-something cougar manouvering the world of modern dating aka the Tinderverse. In the space of 55 mins (it was late on school night so I’m glad they kept in short and sweet) the show covers everything from Violet’s opinion on Botox, her dealing with an addiction to social media, the perks of using battery-operated sex toys and Violet’s confused reaction to glow-in-the-dark female condoms and much much more.

Anyone lady that has ever done a stint on Tinder will be able relate to the things that Violet discusses. Everything from spotting a friends (current!) boyfriend while swiping to having your eyes violated by pictures of men’s intimate parts (as well as their love for kissing fish) to using code names for men when debriefing with your friends (Violet names her Tinder Boys after suburbs of CT e.g. Camps Bay, Green Point and Sea Point and in my world we’ve had the Nazi, Veggie, Baby Daddy and Porsche Boy – I think my naming convention wins!).

Between scenes a projector screen was quite cleverly used to do a sneaky bit of Tinder Shaming (many of the usual suspects flashed before our eyes and some who also featured the Alan Committee’s Love Factually). While in many cases I am a bit skeptical about the use of such visuals in stage productions (to me they are often just a silly distraction or to complicate things that don’t really need to be complicated), I think here they were used really well.

My only slight criticism of the show would be that those who’ve seen the first show might find that some of the jokes are repeated (e.g.her criticism of people’s poor grammar skills on online dating platforms). However, the jokes are still hilarious so there was no harm done really.

All in all though Love Me Tinder provided us with some great LOLs for Tuesday night and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone. The show was sold out last night (and the one before that) and the audience was a mixed bunch – young people, elders, singles and loved up couples – and they all seemed to enjoy the show (I’m judging by the laughter). Furthermore the fact that there is no intermission meant nobody could leave out of protest (like Juriji/Yuri did during Love Factually). The show is running till the 30th of April and tickets were pretty cheap at just R90 (R80 if you purchase online) so you’ve still got time to catch at the Alexander Upstairs.

Finally, did the show convince me to delete my Tinder profile? Hmm … Let’s just say I’ve taken a sabbatical from the world of online dating for a bit but I’m sure it won’t last too long and I’ll eventually be back trawling the Tinderverse in the not so distant future.

Rinsers…Let us know if you’ve seen the show and share you thoughts in the comments below.