Review: Dilaria Asks, What Won’t Rich NYC Girls Do for Attention?

With a reality game show host in the White House, the Vice President staging televised ambushes in the Oval Office that would make Andy Cohen blush, and US Senators manufacturing shocking scenes pithy enough for an Instagram reel, it has become abundantly clear that attention is the coin of the realm. The only way to get it is to be more outrageous than the competition. Tech behemoths strip-mine our brains using big data, AI, and ever more sophisticated algorithms designed to keep us scrolling—sapping attention away from our work, our hobbies, and our flesh-and-blood companions. Contrary to popular belief, the old are just as susceptible to this hypnotism as the young, although those currently in their early 20s can scarcely recall a time before short-form content ruled our brainwaves.

That’s the context into which Julia Randall’s cynical comedy Dilaria, now making its world premiere off-Broadway at the DR2 Theatre, emerges. As far as satires go, it’s incredibly dark—but also a bit dim.

Ella Stiller (daughter of Ben and Christine, granddaughter of Jerry and Anne) makes her off-Broadway debut as the title character, a spoiled rich girl using her family money to make her New York City dreams come true (I believe at Juilliard they call this “method acting”). The demon spawn of Carrie Bradshaw and Hannah Horvath, she barks an inane and overly long story about a bad hookup to her best friend, Georgia (Chiara Aurelia), whose plastered-on visage of affirmation occasionally slips, revealing this to be less a friendship than a hostage situation.

While scrolling through her feed, Dilaria learns that a college friend has died, and she instantly becomes jealous of the deceased and the kind words she is posthumously receiving. She starts planning her own funeral, which she decides will be for hotties only, and will be unbearably sad. But what’s the fun in choreographing a funeral if you cannot enjoy it yourself?

It’s a funny conceit that has been done before. Unfortunately, Randall is no Mark Twain. She beats the target of her satire (rich young narcissists like Dilaria) as if she were Miss Scarlett trying to get home to Tara, and the results are about as funny by the time this 90-minute play groans to the finish line.

With little room for character development, the actors embrace stereotype: Stiller is genuinely scary as Dilaria, her eyebrows permanently arched in rage like a Noh mask. She’s going to girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep until she’s the queen of New York (or, at least, a Real Housewife).

We realize that her boy toy, Noah (pronounced “No-wáh”), is a sub masochist long before he does (Christopher Briney completes the assignment by playing cute and dumb). We suspect Noah’s parents gave him that ridiculous pronunciation so he would have a conversation starter.

Aurelia gets to enact the one genuine character arc in the play, as Georgia valiantly liberates herself before she wastes her 20s playing sidekick to a psychopath—sublimated lesbian urges be damned. We cheer her on as much as we can for a character born out of a thesis.

Director Alex Keegan stages a satisfactory (if not entirely satisfying) production on Frank J. Oliva’s set, which convincingly captures a young woman’s starter apartment, complete with photo-booth pics tacked to painted brick and a shelf featuring only overpriced travel books. Lily Cunicelli’s sexy funeral attire is a hoot. Paige Seber’s on-brand neon magenta lighting extends to the lobby, making us feel like we’re entering a nightclub. And Peter Mills Weiss attempts to ramp up the tension with his sound design, which might work better if the story were plausible enough for the audience to actually buy in to the stakes.

But in her rush to eviscerate Dilaria and her ilk, Randall strains our credulity: How exactly does this princess stage her own death without getting caught in one of the most surveilled cities on the planet? Why is it a Zoom funeral in 2025? And why are Noah and Georgia meeting in the dead girl’s apartment, beyond the obvious practical reason that the set cannot change?

There is an interesting play lurking beneath the superficial mockery of Dilaria—about the mind games women play to exert dominance over other women, and the financial incentives for this behavior in a society that is addicted to female-on-female combat. But to get there, Randall will have to journey beyond the flash-by-your-thumbs first impression.