Theatre in Review: A Perfect Future (Cherry Lane Theatre)

	Donna Bullock, Scott Drummond, Michael T. Weiss, and Daniel Oreskes. Photo: Richard Termine

The title may be A Perfect Future,, but David Hay's new play is a throwback to those days when Edward Albee was all the rage, and everyone and his brother wrote plays about social events where the boozed-up guests tear each other to shreds. Our hosts for this particular evening are John and Natalie Hudson; 30 years before, as students at Berkeley -- the play is set in 2005 -- they were free-loving, drug-taking Marxists, dedicated to social justice and the perfect orgasm. Now, John is a wizard of Wall Street and Natalie is a blocked documentary filmmaker, with tons of footage from Rwanda sitting in her editing room, untouched. Their guest for the evening is Elliot Murphy, a companion of their youth. Elliot is still a true believer, who has shown up to collect a check for the legal fund of a fourth friend, a former Black Panther now accused of terrorist activities.

The stage is set for an evening of nostalgia, fueled by many servings of wine from John's staggeringly well-stocked collection. (He has his own sommelier, Natalie notes, with a hint of acid.) As it happens, there's a fourth for dinner. In a transparent attempt at hooking up Elliot -- a gay lonely-heart -- John has invited over Mark, a young associate at his firm. Mark, a true child of today, has no idea what to make of these exotic, well-heeled creatures, wallowing in memories of youthful decadence and congratulating themselves for their political pieties. As epic amounts of wine are guzzled, it's not long before they're baiting him, and, overplaying his hand in an attempt at shocking his elders, he tells a racist joke. John, seemingly appalled, quietly tries to fire Mark, who fights back.

From there on in, the truth games get uglier and uglier. These plays are tricky, because, if the playwright isn't careful, he comes off as a kind of sadist, making up characters just to torture them. In this case, the first ten minutes of exposition exhaustively demonstrate how far Natalie and John have drifted from their ideals, and the second ten minutes makes vividly clear that their marriage is a powder keg. The rest of the action, despite some funny lines and a couple of good twists, is increasingly shrill and hysterical. By the time all is said and done, you'll most likely be wondering why Natalie and John didn't end up in divorce court some time around the Iran Contra scandal.

The play's time frame doesn't quite make sense, either. We're meant to see John, Natalie, and Elliot as in living in fatal thrall to a kind of '60s utopianism -- Daniel Kluger's sound design features helpings of "Incense and Peppermints" and "Time of the Season for Loving" -- but, given their apparent ages, they must have arrived at college in the mid-'70s, long after the last whiffs of flower power had faded away. If anything, they should have come of age as apolitical, self-actualized navel-gazers of the Me Decade.

Thanks to Wilson Milam's strong direction and a skilled cast, A Perfect Future is a lot easier to take than it might have been. Before she is reduced to flinging pills around the apartment and sinking to her knees in tears, Donna Bullock, as Natalie, totally nails the kind of hostess who loves to put her guests at ease, just so she can shock them with unwanted personal revelations. Michael T. Weiss' John is an unsettlingly hostile host; together, they make a very scary couple. Working against these two, Daniel Oreskes skillfully underplays, letting us see how Elliot slowly gets wise to his friends' true natures. Scott Drummond more than holds his own as Mark, who is neither as innocent nor as conservative as he first appears.

Also helpful is the production design, especially Charles Corcoran's sleek setting, with the picture of Fidel Castro discreetly placed among the bric-a-brac. Ben Stanton's lighting casts an ironically warm glow over these icy proceedings, and Michael McDonald's costumes are spot-on for each character.

But, in truth, it may be time to retire this dinner-party-of-the-damned format and its attendant laments for the lost raptures of the counterculture years. Both are looking pretty old-fashioned these days.--David Barbour