Rita Kalnejais’ This Beautiful Future – which had an off-off-Broadway run this past January – is now transferred to off-Broadway, where it arrives as a trifle hoping to be mistaken for something far more profound.
When it starts, Angelina Fiordellisi and Austin Pendleton enter upstage as, respectively, Angelina and Austin. They settle behind an upstage wall with a long window through which they can see and be seen. Holding microphones, they immediately launch into the Andrews Sisters 1949 chart-topper “I Can Dream, Can’t I?”
When they finish delivering the Sammy Fain-Irving Kahal classic with rather less than Andrews Sisters conviction, Stacey Derosier’s lights fade on those two. They come up on the very red front of stage to reveal Elodie (Francesca Carpanini) and Otto (Uly Schlesinger). There, set designer Frank J. Oliva has placed a mattress at stage right, a spigot at stage left, and not much more.
A supertitle flashes that the locale is Chartres, where the French cathedral, a High Gothic stand-out, is located. The time is 1944. Elodie has entered with a prize she’s just obtained: an egg that Otto and she fix a warm place for hatching a chick – that can be raised to provide more eggs. How they plan to accomplish that without a rooster handy isn’t specified.
Once they are done with that hospitable task, they begin talking about their relationship, which – as their names are the French “Elodie” and the German “Otto” – is quickly revealed to be what was known during World War II as a collaboration horizontale, no translation necessary.
For the next substantial while, Elodie, in a loose dress, and Otto, in white underwear (costumes by Ricky Reynoso), moot aspects of their love and commitment and act it out when passion overcomes them. (Judi Lewis Ockler is the intimacy director and served in the same capacity for last week’s Jasper ).
Eventually, they quarrel about Otto’s belief that “Mr. Hitler” is about to invade England with uniformed Otto in tow. Elodie sobers him up with the news that the German army is already in retreat. They end the dispute with a pillow fight, feathers flying. (Earlier, Elodie rips one pillow open to grab feathers for their nest egg.)
A few times more, the downstage lights fade, and upstage lights rise so that Fiordellisi and Pendleton can sing in their off-hand fashion. The song list includes Fleetwood Mac’s “Thunder Only Happens When it’s Raining” and Adele’s “Someone Like You,” which, like “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” concerns love gone wrong and so underlines the theme. (At one press performance it sounded as if some audience members sang along. Lyrics for all songs appeared on a screen behind Fiordellisi and Pendleton.)
As This Beautiful Future – the title evidently intended as ironic – progresses, the supertitles inform spectators that the short play is in four parts. During them, Otto back in uniform as a lone soldier where he’s searching for the front line and Elodie, also in the open, come to ends that won’t be described.
On the other hand, those eventualities are not at odds with what transpired for German soldiers and French collabos – the derogatory word often used then — as the war concluded. In one instance, not only feathers feature in the plot, but tar is referenced as well. More irony.
Also, before things end, Austin and Angela leave their behind-the-wall placement for encounters with Otto and Elodie. The impression given is that what has passed between the WWII figures has influenced the later-generation two.
Perhaps not. But if not, it’s difficult to put a finger on what Australian playwright Kalnejais is getting at by focusing on the star-crossed wartime affair. Yes, there are times when the specific readily stands for the universal, but This Beautiful Future isn’t one of them. The Elodie-Otto sequences register as too lightweight, too inconsequential. Compound that with the questionable Fiordellisi-Pendleton chirping, and the result isn’t inspiring.
If any points are won by This Beautiful Future, it’s actors Schlesinger and Carpanini and director Jack Serio who win them. They have bright futures. Serio keeps the action moving with aplomb. Schlesinger’s lean, gangly Otto possesses an appealing comic diffidence. Carpanini plays a conflicted, intelligent young woman extremely well.
N.B.: One unexpected lesson can be learned at This Beautiful Future. There’s an old actors axiom about the advisability of not working with children or dogs. It can now be amended to actors being wary of working with children, dogs or newly hatched baby chicks.
This Beautiful Future opened September 19, 2022, at Cherry Lane Theatre and runs through October 30. Tickets and information: thisbeautifulfuture.com
