The Future: A Smart Domestic Drama About The Perils of Living Forever - 0 views
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In The Future, living forever is at hand, and its first test group are characters we meet in the play: they are our generation's children, as one of them mentions going to the London Olympics when he was six years old.
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The same couples gather for each scene, with the plot having progressed at an interval of four years in between scenes. It's a storytelling device that works well, especially in the second act, when the world has changed massivley because of the drug and its societal side effects have become more apparent. Now in their late twenties, the men are old high school friends and in the beginning of the play, their conversational topics are mundane: whether or not to have children, debates about love and money, old memories and past slights. The first mention of Senexate is met with disbelief. But by the next act, most of the characters are taking it.
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After the first excitement over immortality has faded, the problems become apparent. Harrison's medical mind has focused on the statistical and moral realities. Population control is a pressing, global issue — and soon an authoritarian system has fallen into place that limits the birthrate. Jobs and workers become stagnant with no new vacancies, no career ladders to climb. Without children to raise and faced with the possibility of perpetual life, the old-fashioned institution of marriage starts to break down. People in developing countries do not have the same access to Senexate, and the drug company that developed it has assumed massive proportions. There is talk of blood tests, genetic ID cards, and a vaccine that will prevent the drug from working forever, if you violate the rules.
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"A lot of science fiction's greatest works deal with the question of immortality: Do we really want to live forever? And would we still be human if we no longer aged or died? A new stage play called The Future, imported from Britain to New York, deals with this question in a very personal way, via the most urbane of settings: the dinner party and its clash of personalities. Over the course of several years, we follow a group of people who are taking Senexate, the new wonder drug that halts aging. Update: Added full disclosure below."