A Future Perfect

Play (2015)

With Marianna Bassham (Claire), Chelsea Diehl (Elena), Brian Hastert (Max), Uatchet Jin Juch (Annabelle), Nael Nacer (Alex)

Claire (Marianna Bassham), Max (Brian Hastert), a married couple, and Alex (Nael Nacer), are all college friends now in their late thirties, and Elena (Chelsea Diehl), somewhat younger, is married to Alex. Alex and Max still play rock and roll together, and Max even composes songs in between working as a writer for a children’s show on public television. Though their hearts are still full of guitar melodies, Claire, Elena and Alex all find themselves now in corporate jobs. When Elena and Alex announce they are expecting a baby, it throws a wrench into the foursome’s dynamic, with passionately expressed consequences. The succeeding action takes place over two months, but nothing stays the same for long, and the denouement, which follows upon several dramatic, but believable, transitions, turns the tables convincingly.

This highly vernacular but interesting and entertaining play, written by someone who came of age in the nineties, abounds with particular rock and roll references to that decade. It is a throbbing, yet sentimental, glance over the shoulder at a youth recently passed-by, a call for its continuation while blowing it a kiss goodbye. The dialogue is full of contemporary references, rippling with cell phone textings, browser snoopings, and even a hilarious pass at the two “Naomis” – Klein and Wolf – contemporary political writers who get confused in the onslaught. Rambling naturalistically, the text is witty in quite a few places and charged with a youthful sheen betraying its first patches of grey.

Playwright Urban has created a quite embroiled drama out of what first appears as the not particularly distinctive lives of these young-ish people, creating its conflicts with eavesdroppings on private conversations and poking through internet histories. All of these turns might have seemed like ploys, but in this play they come across as quite natural, resulting in a magical conjuring of dramatic tension out of almost nothing.

What seems less natural is that these late thirty-somethings regard parenthood as a totally alien state, a frightening alternate reality, as though they don’t know anyone out of their immediate foursome who has embarked on such a bizarre journey. Urban apparently took his initial inspiration from a dinner party with friends at which the revelation of a pregnancy came about, but I wonder whether that event was at the relatively advanced ages of these characters. They seem a little too old here to be quite as shaken up by the prospects of parenthood as they are. Setting the narrative in 2011 to coincide with the start of Occupy Wall Street is an interesting ploy, but perhaps it forces these characters to be older than they should be.

Despite this less than believable set up, the drama develops quite compellingly, and the writing is done artfully enough to create a quite simmering stew before its end, only 100 minutes in all, with no intermission.

The acting, on the whole, is very good.

Marianna Bassham, a fine actress who has appeared in many Actors Shakespeare Project productions among others, comes forth here with gusto and makes a wonderfully complex, seethingly interesting, Claire. She explodes with heartfelt and humorous confusion at every turn. Passionately drawing Max to her, she demands he have sex with her on the dining room table, then beautifully and abruptly complains that the table is actually harder than it seems. It’s a great moment, and a great fusion of Urban’s writing and Bassham’s witty delivery.

As Max, Brian Hastert gives a good account of dedicated and amorous partnering while looking continually over his shoulder at adolescence. His scene with Annabelle (Uatchet Jin Juch), a kid actor from one of the TV sketches he’s written, is adorable. Credit goes both to the playwright for including this funny little turn and to Hastert for pulling off a convincing puppet routine. Uatchet Jin Juch in her cameo as the kid actor is charming.

Nael Nacer (Alex) is a versatile actor who’s been around many stages in the Boston area and gives a good, thoughtful account here. He specializes in rendering a kind of sweetness that is touched by wryness and winds up, even when in a rage, bringing his heart, and that of the audience, along with him.

Chelsea Diehl (Elena) is a fine adjunct to this trio, hovering on the edge of the wagon as a smaller fourth wheel. I’m not sure that the charades episode her character invokes at the end to convey some difficult news, works as written, but she gives it a good post-college try. Clearly, the playwright wanted to insert unexpected complexity into this seemingly playful episode, but it does not quite fit in with the vernacular ease of the rest.

This world premiere is certainly worth a look. Its poignancies and multiple turns of dramatic effect will no doubt more subtly fuse as its run continues.

– BADMan