Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Rita Kalnejais’s elusive and haunting THIS BEAUTIFUL FUTURE tries to pin down the essence of love

• By drediman
• January 19, 2022
• No Comments

One of the chief pleasures of attending off and off-off-Broadway theater is the opportunity get exposed to exciting new voices. Such was the case last weekend when I caught This Beautiful Future by London-based Australian playwright Rita Kalnejais. The play – which was originally performed across the pond in 2017 at the Yard Theatre – is currently enjoying its U.S. premiere courtesy of the tiny TheaterLab, where it is currently scheduled to run through the end of the month. Set during the waning days of World War II, the play tells the star-crossed love story between Otto and Elodie, a Nazi soldier and a local French girl who are drawn to each other with the irrefutable force of young love.

Although the premise is as old as time (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, more specifically Liesl and Rolfe’s forbidden love affair in The Sound of Music), Ms. Kalnejais’s elusive and haunting play defies expectations. In its depiction of a fumbling attempt at intimacy during wartime, the piece conveys life and love in fraught times – but in a way that viscerally exposes the fragility of each moment. Indeed, This Beautiful Future is a compact, structurally adventurous drama that operates as a microcosm for man’s staggering capacity for ignorance and cruelty, but also for tenderness and joy. And in its search for the essence of love in the black box that resides between lust and wistfulness (the play is annotated by the unlikeliest of guides – an easy-going elderly couple in a karaoke booth!), the playwright arrives on a tenuously hopeful note that beguiled me and still lingers in my thoughts.

Although mounted on a limited budget, director Jack Serio has managed to stage a carefully-calibrated production that hits the work’s wide-ranging requirements with panache. The cast of four do the play proud with performances that dig deep are finely-etched. As Otto and Elodie, Justin Mark and Francesca Carpanini perfectly capture the intoxication, confusion, and awkwardness of young love. As the play’s geriatric guides, Angelina Fiordellisi and Tony nominee Austin Pendleton provide fascinating counterpoints in perspective. This Beautiful Future is the kind of show that could easily fly under the radar given its short run and limited marketing. I suggest that you don’t miss it.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THIS BEAUTIFUL FUTURE
Off-Broadway, Play
TheaterLab
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
Through January 30