Theatre in Review: Future Anxiety (The Flea Theatre)

Things aren't looking good in Future Anxiety. Set in the not-too-distant future, it depicts a world that has basically gone to hell in a hand basket. The US economy has collapsed, removing all social services; dead bodies are left in the street. The bankrupt are rounded up and shipped to China, where they are used as slave labor in the rebuilding of Hong Kong, which was destroyed by a tsunami. The environment is a total disaster; people don't want to be caught in the rain, because it stings so badly. The population of the earth is 12 billion people; the U.S. has a one-child-per-family policy, which is ignored by bands of radical Christians -- we meet one who is carrying 12 fetuses at once. A group of the fed-up is toiling, along with a dicey-looking messiah figure, to build a rocket and get off the planet once and for all.

The good part about Laurel Haines' comic horror fantasy is how ingeniously she ties together multiple plot lines to create a Hieronymus Bosch-style mural depicting man's destruction of the world. A young woman who secretly works as a collector, rounding up those without money - her friends think she's a pet groomer - is devotedly involved in building that rocket. One of her victims, a poet, continues to work at his craft even as he slaves in the ruins of Hong Kong; his devotion to words has an unsettling effect on his young Chinese captor. Meanwhile, the rocket builder's ex-wife is a nurse at a medical facility where the cryogenically frozen are awakened and given new bodies - only to discover that the earth as they know it has disappeared.

The bad part of Haines' play is that all this intricacy becomes an end in itself. Her imagination is vivid when it comes conjuring tomorrow's terrors, but she's less confident when it comes to giving it a black comic spin or making us care about the people caught in these apocalyptic events. As a result, Future Anxiety is more sermon than satire, and it becomes less effective with each repetition of its theme.

If nothing else, Future Anxiety provides a fine workout for The Bats, the theatre's resident troupe of actors, all of whom, under Jim Simpso's nimble, fast-paced direction, are excellent as a gallery of characters, including perky TV news anchors, homeless men, members of the Chinese military, medical bureaucrats, the recently unfrozen, and various kooks, freaks, and dreamers. Even better is Kyle Chepulis' set, a spiraling array of tiny platforms that allows the action to move at top speed. Brian Aldous' lighting - appropriately using a number of energy-efficient LED units - gets the maximum effect out of a variety of side angles. Sydney Gallas' costumes and Jill BC DuBoff's sound are also fine.

It's tough to pull off this kind of dystopian fantasy without seeming shrill or hysterical, qualities Future Anxiety doesn't entirely avoid. In addition, the piece suffers from the lack of anything like a viable ending. It has some gripping moments, but, ultimately, it tries too hard to cover too much ground, which, unfortunately, makes it seem a little glib when it should be scaring the pants off of us.--David Barbour