Austin (Austin Pendleton, rear right) observes the World War II romance of Elodie (Francesca Carpanini) and Otto (Uly Schlesinger).
A woman walks over to a large flat-screen TV and, using the remote control, selects a karaoke track. Believe it or not, this is the start of a play set in occupied France in 1944: This Beautiful Future, directed by Jack Serio. That woman and her male counterpart—theater vets Angelina Fiordellisi and Austin Pendleton as characters named Angelina and Austin—are on stage for the entire 80-minute running time, but the story really centers on two teenagers: Otto, a German soldier stationed in Chartres in the summer of ’44, and Elodie, a local girl. They’re both painfully naive. She thinks her Jewish neighbors will eventually come home; he’s psyched to march into England and anticipates a quick British surrender.
Otto (Schlesinger) and Elodie (Carpanini) enjoy wine and cheese and a moment of levity.
Most of the play depicts Elodie and Otto’s tryst in the vacated home of a Jewish family, though a few late scenes provide a flashback to their first meeting and a flash-forward where the audience learns their fates. At various intervals, Angelina and Austin—seated upstage—perform karaoke to tunes from the World War II era and ... not. They sing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and involve the audience in a sing-along to Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Their only spoken dialogue consists of statements about what they’d do differently in life: “I wouldn’t worry about weather / I’d respond to that letter you sent me / I wouldn’t bother sweeping / I’d look you in the eye,” goes one early sequence.
The older couple’s perplexing interpolation in the young people’s love story is just one discordant note This Beautiful Future strikes. The anachronistic music (Abba is playing as the audience take their seats) is another. And so is an insouciance toward Otto’s embrace of Nazi ideology. Wouldn’t somebody’s wholehearted admiration of Hitler and hope for “a future where everyone’s clean—one race of people who believe the same thing” be a romance deal breaker, no matter the circumstances? Even if Otto’s supposed to be only 16 or 17, he’s not a small child who couldn’t know better. Yet Elodie listens to him with almost no pushback (or revulsion). This doesn’t seem like the right scenario to illustrate the innocence of young love or how one might be blinded by a craving for tenderness during wartime.
Playwright Rita Kalnejais seems to be presenting Otto and Elodie as an Everycouple, one the audience can understand and relate to because haven’t we all been fools for love at some point? But actors Uly Schlesinger and Francesca Carpanini don’t have a lot of romantic chemistry, so the idea that they are hopelessly and helplessly attracted to each other is not persuasive. They converse like any two people getting to know each other. When he asks if she likes him, she replies, “I don’t know.”
Otto (Schlesinger) and Elodie (Carpanini) in a precoital pillow fight. Photographs by Emilio Madrid.
The presence of the older people also appears intended to give the love story a universal context. Their admonitions are mostly of the follow-your-heart, throw-caution-to-the-wind, don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff variety—typical regrets of later in life. And while that may be good advice in most cases, the relationship that’s playing out on the same stage would be an exception. Maybe “I’ll let it be simple,” “I would open my hand,” I’d sleep knowing it all changes by morning” doesn’t apply when one person in the relationship is a Nazi murdering your neighbors.
So what are Angelina and Austin doing there if what they say (and sing) is unconnected to the young love story? Kalnejais may have been going for genre-defying—period drama with a contemporary Greek chorus—but the two parts don’t mesh. Another mismatch is the rather tentative singing and movement by 82-year-old Pendleton, alongside the obviously enthusiastic Fiordellisi. In the younger couple also, the woman gives a better-defined performance. Carpanini evokes some sense of a young woman who doesn’t grasp the terrible things happening around her or perhaps is willfully ignoring them, whereas Schlesinger doesn’t truly make Otto’s combination of gullibility and viciousness convincing.
This Beautiful Future’s script and performances may not convey romantic yearning, but the production’s distinctive look does set a mood. Scenic designer Frank J. Oliva eschewed a realistic set in favor of carpeting the stage, walls and all, in red (the color of love and of blood). A mattress near one corner is the only furnishing, so there’s a feeling of isolation and deprivation. And looking back on youth is given physical form with the large windows on the rear wall separating Elodie and Otto’s hideaway from Angelina and Austin’s karaoke booth. Sound design by Christopher Darbassie includes an explosion and, no doubt, some contribution to all the karaoke.
This Beautiful Future runs through Oct. 30 at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.). Performances are 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday, with matinees 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets, visit thisbeautifulfuture.com.
