Futura
cast list
Edward A. Hajj, Mia Katigbak, Christopher Larkin, Angela Lin
directed by
Liz Diamond
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A lecture about fonts seems hardly the kind of fascinating set-up with which to start a play, but that's exactly what begins Jordan Harrison's new play Futura, now playing at TBG Theatre as part of the National Asian American Theatre Company's current season.
The play, set in the not-so-distant future, focuses on a professor (the magnificent Mia Katigbak), whose husband (Edward A. Hajj) is presumed to have been murdered. The first half hour of the play consists of a lecture she's giving to a hall full of students at the university at which her husband taught and where she is now taking up his reins.
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Before the lecture can conclude, catastrophe ensues as the professor is kidnapped and brought to an undisclosed location at the behest of her not-quite-dead husband Edward. She's been brought there by punk-chick Grace (Angela Lin) and Gash (Christopher Larkin), two of Edward's henchmen (their organization is one that goes against the grain of the government's prevailing sentiment that printed books should be obsolete).
You see, the world is now a messy place. The play presents to us a future where the world's books have been assembled into one giant mass of text accessible to all and available for readers to present their amendments and comments (sort of like Google Books). Though the professor is adamant about returning to the printed word, Edward, after having experienced what he has at the hands of the government, is increasingly uncertain about the future of writing.
It's a play that's obsessed with text and its power to provoke a reader, not only because of the meanings of words but because of the way those words are presented on a page. The play borrows its title from a font created by Paul Renner in the 1920s, a progressive, futuristic font that nonetheless embraced readability and practicality, pushing the limits of how different text could look but still be recognized by a reader.
Unfortunately (and strangely enough), it's the professor's lecture at the start of the play that is most captivating. The play loses some of its steam once the lecture's well-placed hints at a disjointed future world become a more tangible situational reality. The arrival of Grace and Gash presents the play with some rather superfluous conflicts, and Hajj's contributions in the role of Edward are less than stellar, his raised voice presumably passing for anger.
As a play, Futura raises many fascinating issues and benefits from magnificent projection design by Tal Yarden and set design by David Evans Morris, whose rotated unit set evokes multiple locations with one large, movable cube. Still, the ideas contained therein are never developed quite enough to truly bring the play beyond the level of fearful science fiction.
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New York reviews
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Three Sisters, Classic Stage Company
The Piano Lesson, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Momentum, Laurie Beechman Theatre
The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, La MaMa E.T.C.
John Gabriel Borkman, BAM Harvey Theater
Blood From a Stone, Acorn Theatre
Malfi, Inc., Theatre 54
Pieces, 59E59 Theaters
A Delicate Balance, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Memorandum, Beckett Theatre
The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre
Driving Miss Daisy, Golden Theatre
Futura, TBG Theatre
La Bete, The Music Box Theatre
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
A Life in the Theatre, Schoenfeld Theatre
In Transit, 59E59 Theaters
theatre
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