Gianfranco Settecasi [Future Tense]

Gianfranco Settecasi is known among friends as being a man of many hats. One might think of him first and foremost as a musician. A proficient piano player and composer of cabaret-style songs, Settecasi is a veritable Cole Porter reincarnation with a 21st century kick. The popularity of “Uncle Giff,” a persona created by Settecasi that melds contemporary humor with Hollywood’s Golden Age, is testament to the young artist’s performative strength and subtle comedy. He’s a fun-loving collaborator and an exacting director, yet for this most recent production, Settecasi decides to try something new.

Future Tense, a tragicomedy written as well as directed by Settecasi, opens with the most expertly written dialogue of the show. Collegiate lovers John (Thomas Hedlund) and Meaghan (Moira O’Sullivan) come in from a downpour, having just escaped the rained-out wedding of some distant high school friends. From the finely-crafted, mundane, naturalistic chatter about towels and cell phones left in the car, we begin to witness the seemingly agreeable nature of John and Meaghan’s relationship, John mouthing off endlessly, Meaghan’s gentle monosyllabic responses. Yet one can sense that something is awry. “Kiss me,” says Meaghan sweetly, and John’s response is the first subtle, brilliant suggestion of what is to come; distantly, in a minutely maniacal way, John responds, “Yeah, sure.” The entrance of the other two characters, John and Meaghan’s estranged high school best friends (Olivia Caputo and Samuel Bellows), heralds even more hysterically perfect realism. Settecasi covers every standard conversation filler, from “you look so cute!” to updates about the last few years that quickly run dry. The four old friends fade in and out of familiarity, finding common ground in high school gossip, but losing their footing in everything else, a delicate, awkward dance that Settecasi’s writing makes heartbreakingly recognizable.

A small contribution to the realism of Future Tense is Carolyn Emory’s minimal set design. Emory’s living room captures the essence of vapid suburban decor: fake flowers, a book basket, grey-blue. But all in all, the production value is unimpressive. This 4th year production at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theatre School certainly feels as such; the design and direction fall a step short of feeling fleshed out or complete. However, this sense of inexperience comes mostly from the student actors. While Hedland and O’Sullivan nail the opening realism, the performances generally fall short of Settecasi’s writing. Fight scenes and breakdowns feel whiny and unjustified, and each actor has at least one prominent hangup. However, O’Sullivan and Bellows particularly have refreshingly honest, if meager, presences onstage, and, oddly, the four actors’ performative habits often seem fitting to the roles. This is particulary the case with Thomas Hedlund. His role, John, who at first plays a pleasant, effusive host to friends, quickly devolves into an disturbingly belligerent gossip. Hedland is somewhat of an awkward actor, but his self-conscious posture and over-aggressive vocal quality contribute almost perfectly to his role, foreshadowing his alarming transformation.

Though the performance quality unravels, Settecasi’s thrilling conceit becomes clear throughout the downward spiral of the play’s second half. The old friends, Carrie and Alex, attempt to escape John’s aversive behavior, but are forced to stay as the torrents outside have become a flood. Trapped in this powder keg, sparked by past tensions, the room ignites. Settecasi’s highly-realistic dialogue suddenly explodes into a delightful, unexpected fury of acrid insults as characters rehash and reveal suppressed high school drama. Characters become as absurd as they are animalistic, blatantly laughing as others are insulted, desperately embracing people they have every reason to despise. Alex and John, just moments ago ferociously at odds, sit on the couch together in lull of apparent peace while the women argue. Yet their bubbling rage is palpably present; Alex binges on potato chips while John pokes at him incessantly like a mischevous five year old, a bizarre, childish, terrifying expression of almost inhuman emotion.

Thus, Future Tense is veritably this generation’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though not short of imperfections. Future Tense is perhaps underwritten as of yet, lacking much of the lead-up to extreme emotional proportions that is so geniusly smooth in Woolf. Settecasi instead cops out somewhat with a love triangle, allowing romantic passion to serve as the primary motivator. This feels largely unsatisfying, particularly as he almost achieves the same effect without the romance by exploring the unavoidable allegiances that form in groups based on personalities alone. Future Tense also tends toward a somewhat too-patterned, murder mystery-like structure, revealing each character’s major secret one by one. Yet, the structure simultaneously seems deliberate, a calculated argument that an unraveling John follows to his own destruction.

The true ingenuity of Future Tense lies in this young artist’s unforgiving satire of his generation. “You were supposed to be so much more,” John exclaims to his friends, “responsible, stable, mature.” But these statements are not so much high expectations as they are a hatred for humanity, whose emotions and imperfections are the sole obstacles to what John holds most dear: ambition. In a powerfully written monologue about college degrees and the road to success, Settecasi exposes the monster behind the ladder-climbers, behind the self-starts, the educated entrepreneurs. He paints a piercingly resonant worst case scenario: the college graduate, John, devoid of a soul, whose social interactions are reduced to criticism, his most loyal tool. Settecasi also paints the others, the ‘failures,’ the creatures who prefer occupational mediocrity to social isolation. He shows us, with unrelenting honesty and unabashed vulnerability, a point of view that is largely underrepresented. He shows us young adults whose past lives have withered to superficiality, whose present is empty and anxiety-filled, whose futures, by one misstep, are made irredeemable.

Future Tense


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