By SCOTTY BENNETT
There are times in a person’s life when the only rational response to the pressures of daily living is to escape into a different reality. Drugs and alcohol are often the doorways to the alternate realm. Still, sometimes, the mind of the escapee creates, in whole cloth, a new place within the fabric of their everyday reality.
Maybe Tomorrow, written by Max Mondi and directed by Chad Austin, is a play about such a place and the person who created it.
Inspired by a true story, Austin directs a cast of two in an exploration of a woman lost in the present and locked within a mental space defined by the four walls of a bathroom. She is unable to move beyond the walls of that room into the outside unknown, mediating the world through a computer and a caregiver.
Gail (Elizabeth A. Davis) and Ben (Dan Amboyer) have lived together in a deluxe travel trailer in Vermont for seven years. She is an artist who makes jewelry sold from their home that they have turned into a shop. He is the owner of an auto repair business for foreign cars. Her store is doing well, but his garage is not. When Gail gets pregnant, they are forced to confront a serious financial challenge. Ben needs a paying job. He ends up being hired by a car dealership in New Jersey. This event introduces a further challenge to their new marriage.
Ben convinces Gail that the move to New Jersey will be good for both of them and their soon-to-be-born baby. He points out that the trailer makes the move easy with a minimum of stress. Gail will have to give up her store, but Ben convinces her that she can set up and run an online store while she cares for the baby.
The move is made, but it quickly becomes clear that Gail is having a difficult time adjusting to motherhood. The bathroom has always been her refuge when she feels stressed. She calls it her “pause room,” but it soon becomes her “escape from reality” place.
The events leading up to the move establish the characters. Ben is a supportive, caring, dutiful man who wants only to help Gail. She is an anxious and unsure of herself person. The baby’s birth is the event that unhinges Gail from reality and puts her in the pause room for two years while Ben cares for their child. Her mental condition deteriorates to the point where she begins to hallucinate about being in a play and seeing an audience to a point where she is not even sure a baby ever existed.
Amboyer is solid in his embodiment of Ben. He makes the character believable as a man who goes from a loose connection with the reality of his business management skills to developing a solid, mature focus on his child’s needs. This change in demeanor is central to his inability to deal with Gail’s ever-deepening psychological isolation from the reality of her life. Amboyer shows us a man gradually coming to grips with the wrenching decision he makes concerning his and his child’s future.
Davis’s embodiment of Gail is not as strong, although still believable. Finding a balance between a character’s loss of emotional stability and moments of clear focus is a difficult undertaking. Gail can run a successful online business and execute her creative energy in building her products but is unable to leave the confines of the bathroom or even engage with the child she is not even sure exists. Davis finds the nuances of behavior that define the character’s psychological struggles. Still, those moments don’t solidly connect with the audience. These are critical elements to gaining the audience’s sympathy for the character or even just an acceptance of the character’s situation.
Amboyer and Davis’s performances are solid, given the material they have to work with and Chad Austin’s direction. The production holds one’s attention even with the moments that raise questions about the characters’ actions or the living conditions’ believability.
One of the issues with believability is the set as a representation of a travel trailer bathroom. The performance area is a square stage with the audience seated on three sides. The bathroom is defined with metal frames forming the outline of walls on three sides, and the fourth side is glass-paneled with doors. The fixtures are luxurious, as one might expect in a high-end apartment, but not a travel trailer or even a deluxe, double-wide house trailer. While Josafath Reynoso’s scenic design is beautifully done, it is wrong for the environment described in the story.
The lighting design by Dawn Chiang solidly defines the set and changes in mood, cleverly including lighting the joints in the tile floor in the moments when Gail may be hallucinating. The costume design by Siena Zoe Allen is beautifully integrated into the action, with Davis’s small, distinctive changes happening onstage. At the same time, Amboyer’s are more diverse and occur off-stage. Evdoxia Ragkou’s sound design effectively underscores and provides support for the emotional flow of the production.
Maybe Tomorrow (90 minutes with no intermission), produced by the Abingdon Theatre Company, runs at the Mezzanine Theatre, A.R.T./New York Theatres at 510 West 53rd Street in New York through April 6, 2025. through April 6, 2025). For tickets, click here.
