Tomorrow We Love

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Jeffrey Vause and Steve Hauck’s Tomorrow We Love is a parody of the women’s weepies from the 1950’s as directed by Douglas Sirk, produced by Ross Hunter and enacted by Jane Wyman or Lana Turner. It takes elements from All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Peyton Place and Madame X: narrow-minded townspeople, wandering husbands romancing their secretaries, loyal abandoned wives, intransigent daughters, treacherous women friends, con-men out for a fast buck, and younger boyfriends. With both the heroine and her best friend played in drag, the play also wants to be a tribute to Charles Busch and Charles Ludlam.

It is 1960 in Noble Bay, California, a quaint hamlet north of Monterrey, where everyone knows everyone’s business and if anyone steps out of line they are immediately social pariahs. Elaine “Lainie” Fairbanks’ husband Arthur has not been home for four weeks and the neighbors are all predicting a divorce in Lainie’s future. After all isn’t Arthur living with his nubile secretary Pamela?

To make matters worse, their college age daughter Trippy has been seeing too many men particularly Logan McMartin, a beatnik living in an RV down on the beach. When Arthur files for divorce and offers a onetime payout, Sid Spellman, the lawyer husband of Lainie’s supposed best friend Lucille, concocts a plot to rook Lainie of her money and her home and fly off to Bermuda. To help in the plan, Lucille introduces Lainie to Farley Weathers, a handsome younger man who claims to be a Hollywood actor but is just as likely a gigolo living off of rich older women. How this leads to gun play, cocktail parties, changing sexual mores, and new dresses is the plot of this movie parody.

The play is framed, movie style, by a trial of the leading character, so that the bulk of the play becomes a flashback to what led up to it. However, the show which is occasionally amusing is too dependent on name dropping and 1950’s references: Leave It To Beaver, Dragnet, Sputnik, Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, Flannery O’Connor, James Bond, Geritol, Jane Wyman, Henny Youngman, Valley of the Dolls, Jack Kerouac, and quotes from Damn Yankees, South Pacific and A Star is Born.

While the sound design by Morry Campbell is often witty with snatches of the themes from Written on the Wind, A Summer Place, West Side Story and Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, much of the exaggeration is too farfetched without being remotely believable: Farley refers to his ex-wife Lena Horne and claims to have been brought up at The White House by President Calvin Coolidge and his wife.

The acting is often over the top but doesn’t go far enough to be satiric of the genres being mocked. Vause as his heroine Lainie Fairbanks is obviously intended to be one of those housewives who has not stayed up with the times Vause does not come near what Charles Busch would have done with the role. Also in drag, Jimmy Moon as her supposed best friend Lucille is better but indicates so often that her jokes are diminished. As Lainie’s lawyer Sid, Robert Sebastian Webb is so obviously a crook only a child would have missed it. Well-built Alex Herrera as gigolo Farley Weathers who may or may not be gay is quite effective as the con artist who is out to make a killing. Sarah Sanou’s Trippy is from the Sandra Dee school of acting but without making much impression. As her boyfriend Logan played in drag, Phoebe Lloyd tries hard but is not very convincing.

Hauck’s direction is smooth, but the acting is uneven and does not suggest the impeccable casting of Douglas Sirk films. While those films were famous for their lavish décor and costumes, Evan Frank’s simple set design and Jimmy Moon’s dowdy costumes do not come near those Class A Hollywood productions notable for being eye-filling in every frame.

This is at least the second tribute to Charles Busch this season and the over-the-top movies of the 1950’s. The problem is they look easier to parody than they are and as Busch has set the bar pretty high, first timers don’t get it right away. Tomorrow We Love requires a fairly extensive knowledge of the films and cultural icons of the Eisenhower fifties which are not sufficiently satirized by name dropping and quoting. While the play is at times amusing, it doesn’t go far enough in poking fun at the era and its movies.

Tomorrow We Love (through June 23, 2024)

Proud Image Theatre Company

The Chain Theatre, 312 W. 36^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets visit http://www.tomorrowwelove.com

Running time: 95 minutes without an intermission