Remembering the Future, the new play by Peter Lefcourt now in a world premiere at the Odyssey Theater, mixes comedy with pinches of the paranormal to prepare a savory theatrical dish.
Lefcourt introduces us to a middle-aged couple, Greg (Michael Corbett) and Melissa (Tarina Pouncy), who were teenaged lovers forty years ago. An inter-racial twosome, they dreamed of fleeing racist Minneapolis for Paris, where he would become the white Charlie Parker and she would live a free and glamorous Left Bank life.
The dream was dashed when he abruptly ditched her, married an earlier girlfriend and became a corporate lawyer. All this comes out in the present, when they meet for a drink four decades later and start trading memories of their once-passionate, idealistic affair.
Those memories soon take human form. We see Greg and Melissa as they were at eighteen (with Andrew Neaves and Fatima El-Bashir impersonating them in spirited fashion). Thus as the elderly Greg and Melissa recall, say, going on a movie date, “Jaws” or “Jules et Jim” flashes on a rear screen while they watch, entranced. Then as the grey-heads describe making love for the first time, we see that too, downstage right, in a steamy sex scene.
Gradually Greg and Melissa find themselves attracted to each other, as before. But as that happens, their avatars suddenly join them in the present and begin to take part in their discussions. “Why did you abandon Melissa?” Greg at 18 asks Greg at 58. “Why did you give up your dream of becoming a jazz musician and settle for a boring, unhappy life in law?”
While these exchanges take place, a fifth character (David Jahn), wanders in and out of the action. Sometimes he’s a bartender, next a waiter, then a kind of one-man Greek chorus breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly. Full of quips and puns, he keeps the play from getting too serious and didactic. “You’re watching a comedy,” he reminds us (or in words to that effect).
Lefcourt’s story increases in strength and clarity as it unfolds. Greg and Melissa, as their bygone love is rekindled, face a second chance in life. They blew their first chance at happiness forty years ago. But now they can make up for that mistake by hooking up again and becoming, against the odds, a loving couple once more. Can they do it is the challenging question that ends the play. It’s up to the audience to decide, insists the playwright.
Remembering the Future’s thin-but-clever story gets a big boost from the cast, all of whom contribute strong, vivid performances, backed up by skillful direction and strong production values.
