There’s a lot of pungent realistic dialogue in Future Tense, and if the play doesn’t finally have much to say, still its author, NYU college student and Tampa native Gianfranco Settecasi, is distinctly talented. He can write a good argument and he can reproduce a confession, and if we’re not surprised that his characters have hidden lives, still there’s some pleasure in watching the masks drop and the truths emerge. Some pleasure — but not enough. Maybe Ibsen could make a satisfying play out of exposing the Pillars of Society, but in the land of Jersey Shore, Monicagate and Wikileaks, the only real shock is a life that doesn’t lend itself to scandal. As for the unspeakable, we get it every morning on CNN.
The context is promising, though: Four prep school friends who have gone on to different colleges meet up after a wedding and try to make sense of the various disharmonies of which they’re conscious. There’s ringleader John, an acerbic, judgmental truth-teller, and his on-and-off again lover Meghan, a kind soul. There’s Alex, the goofy and inexperienced sad sack, and Carrie, the sexually aggressive, self-destructive coed. At first, the four friends mostly revel in other peoples’ troubles: The newlyweds are too young, one old acquaintance became a stripper, another had an abortion, yet another has a mother who preys on her daughter’s boyfriends. Then, inevitably, the players turn against one another. But nothing much is revealed that we haven’t heard a thousand times (on radio talk shows, in People magazine, on Dr. Phil), and the melodramatic event at drama’s end is neither convincing nor particularly interesting. The only message we’re left with is that people aren’t what they seem, and most spectators will not, I hope, find this information staggering. We depart as we arrived.
Still, Settecasi has created — and impersonates — one fascinating character. John is an angry, self-infatuated faultfinder, and no one, however close, is safe from his sallies. His relationship with Meghan is especially complicated. They once tried to be lovers, but were physically unable to make the hookup successful. There was a breakup and a reunion, and this time the sex, for reasons eventually revealed, worked just fine. But John hides the resumption of the relationship from Alex and Carrie (driving Meghan to despair), and then turns on Meghan, insisting that their copulations have no meaning at all. And this is just the beginning: as the evening grows longer, John focuses his derision on all three others, jabbing and wounding and speaking daggers to the wounds. What drives him? Unfortunately, Settecasi gives us no clue. But John is a wonderfully dramatic character, and actor/director/writer Settecasi plays him with bitchy panache. As playwrights from Shakespeare to Albee well know, the Vice character steals the show.
The other actors (all, like Settecasi, college students) mostly turn in solid performances, though they have less to work with. As Alex, Sean Collins is an outsider in a blue funk, unsatisfied with himself, and harboring a few secrets which just depress him all the more once they’re revealed. Molly Dillon as Meaghan is a well-meaning victim, a Girl Scout with a taste for criminals (how else to justify her love for John?), and somehow, at the deepest level, a survivor. Only Carolyn Emery as Carrie doesn’t quite make sense: she’s supposed to be a slut, but never appears (outside her dialogue) to be putting moves on Alex or John. But the handsome upscale living room set by Emery and Settecasi is the most attractive I’ve ever seen at the Silver Meteor Gallery, and quashes forever the lie that this space can’t be well-designed. The contemporary costumes are by — who else? — Settecasi again. And of course, he directs.
What’s lacking here is an original vision. Psychological strip tease ain’t enough: not when the Phantom of the Opera himself is revealing his ravaged face morning noon and night (for a small fee) on streaming video. Settecasi has talent, command of language, a sure sense of the theatrical. Now he needs something to tell us, something we haven’t already learned from other sources. To paraphrase Ezra Pound, art is news that stays news. When this writer gets his hands on some real news: well, watch out. It’s gonna be stunning.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2012.