The worst part about being married is you no longer have dating stories to tell. Few stand-up comedy specials have made me laugh as loud as I did when a friend described a date gone horribly wrong. Nothing on Adult Swim can match the ridiculousness of clumsy flirtation. And is there any better cringe comedy than the mixed signals of two people on a first date? To be sure, these stories can be horrifying and sad as often as amusing. The conceit is as simple as it is ingenious: Ms. Moore, a comic, writer The Onion and actress she has , connects her Tinder account to a projector, which allows an audience to see her conversations in real time. Juggling several exchanges with men, narrating the conversation in various voices, she transforms the banter on a dating app into compelling long-form improvisation. Doing comedy that relies on unsuspecting strangers might sound like a gimmick or, worse, a cruel prank, but Ms. Moore, a cagey and humane performer, has developed an instinct for turning the raw materials of sexually charged chat with ordinary strangers into honed and generous jokes. The way she manipulates tone and pace reveals an artist supremely confident in her form, not to mention a flirt par excellence. As soon as the blond Ms. Moore, wearing a red skirt, strode onstage last month, the hundreds of young audience members sitting and standing, most quietly staring at their phones, looked up, the mood shifting from a university library to a pop concert. Even with a microphone, Ms. Moore had to raise her voice to be heard, as she explains, as she always does, that the goal here is not love. After catching the crowd up with what happened to people she talked with online during the last show she will keep in touch with some afterward , Ms. Moore starts sifting through profiles, examining photos and asking the audience if she should swipe right signaling interest or left rejection. She narrates her responses while typing them, often in the character of a whiny, clueless fool. Some answer with earnestness, and while the show does have moments of warmth and genuine connection, these are the ones she abandons fastest. When the conversation slows or becomes too chummy, Ms. Moore shifts characters into the intensely needy girlfriend who is dramatically disappointed in a benign response. Playing a cartoon version of what a shallow man most hates — engagement, political passion — she smuggles in social critique, but Ms. Moore might be most deft at drawing people out. In one show I saw a few months ago, when a guy expressed an interest in psytrance music, she repeatedly asked him to explain to her what it was all about. What usually tips it over is one truly game guy who seems to be in on the joke. Moore to move from riffing to building a character, a relationship and even a scene. It did last month when she met Roger. The discussion started with small talk about design, then got serious fast when she launched into a dark confession about never leaving her basement that culminated with this attention-getter. Moore hit the jackpot. Speaking in a slightly unhinged voice, she became more aggressive, making herself the target of the joke. Moore put on the brakes, responding sternly and referring to another man on Tinder, seeming to put an end to this romance.
