REMEMBERING THE FUTURE


Imagine if the person you were at age 18 could tell 58-year-old you exactly what they think of your life choices. Playwright Peter Lefcourt does precisely this in his entertaining new “existential comedy” Remembering The Future, now tantalizing audiences with “What ifs” at the Odyssey Theatre.

It’s been four decades since corporate lawyer Greg (Michael Corbett) and psychotherapist Melissa (Tarina Pouncy) fell head over heels in first love, a romance that ended abruptly when Greg opted to wed the girl of his parents’ dreams, someone that Melissa could never be, at least not in the early 1980s when mixed-faith, mixed-race marriages were no more likely to be embraced by Greg’s Jewish parents than they would have been by Melissa’s African-American mom and dad.

And so Greg married Arlene, fathered three now adult (or nearly adult) children, and abandoned dreams of becoming a jazz musician for a life defending pharmaceutical companies in the courtroom.

Melissa, meanwhile, married twice (and divorced both husbands), and used what she’d learned from those two mistakes to counsel couples with relationship issues of their own.

Now, thanks to the wonders of social media, Facebook has reunited the star-crossed lovers in a Minneapolis Radisson Hotel bar, and after a bit of catch-up chitchat, Greg and Melissa find themselves reminiscing about their college selves, flashbacks engagingly reenacted by Andrew Neaves and Fatima El-Bashir.

Then, in the play’s inventive twist on such Hollywood fare as Peggy Sue Got Married and Back To The Future (but in reverse), playwright Lefcourt has 18-year-old Greg and Melissa time-traveling forty years into the future to advise 58-year-old Greg and Melissa on what they ought to do next.

It’s a clever conceit, and unless I’m mistaken, one that’s not been done before, which is just one reason to put Remembering The Future on your summer calendar.

Another is Lefcourt’s snappy, incisive dialog, making this a worthy follow-up to such previous Lefcourt treats as La Ronde Du Lunch and Café Society, all three plays savvily directed by Terri Hanauer.

And if Lefcourt’s latest comedy didn’t already have more than enough to offer as it was originally written, having Pouncy and El-Bashir nail their auditions as two versions of Melissa has only made the play richer by adding matters of race to Greg and Melissa’s life decisions.

Not only that, but if Pouncy and El-Bashir could conceivably pass for older-younger incarnations of the same woman, Corbett and Neaves are pretty darned close to dead ringers. (Kudos to casting directors Michael Donovan, CSA, and Richie Ferris, CSA.

Corbett and Pouncy are totally terrific as a couple of older-but-not-necessarily-wiser 50somethings, and like their younger counterparts provide enough ex-lover sparks to make their reunion a believable one.

Rising musical theater star (and UCLA grad) El-Bashir is an absolute delight in her first L.A. straight play, and Neaves, freshly graduated from rival campus USC, is a charismatic star on the rise.

Completing the cast is sassy fourth-wall-breaking “Greek Chorus” David Jahn, who not only introduces us to Greg and Melissa but plays multiple waiters, each as entertainingly obnoxious as the other.

Ulyana Chava-McDonald’s abstract scenic design serves Lefcourt’s play quite niftily, allowing our imaginations (and her backdrop projections) to fill in the blanks, with Mylette Nora’s costumes, Gavan Wyrick’s lighting, Alysha Bermudez’s sound design, and Jenine MacDonald’s properties completing an all-around Grade-A design package.

Remembering The Future is produced by Racquel Lehrman, Theatre Planners and presented by Sweet Talk Productions. Misha Riley, Theatre Planners, is associate producer. Roella Dellosa is stage manager. Assistant stage manager Grayson Kennedy makes several perky onstage appearances. Ken Werther is publicist.

How you yourself react when queried as to whether Greg and Melissa should rethink decisions made over the past forty years will likely depend on where you are in your own life. Your reaction to Remembering The Future will likely match mine. It’s another Peter Lefcourt/Terri Hanauer gem.

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 South Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles.
www.OnStage411.com/Future

–Steven Stanley
July 31, 2022
Photos: Jenny Graham

 

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