The Lo-Fi, Sci-Fi Song for a Future Generation

Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Tuesday, May 11 2010

In Joe Tracz's Song for a Future Generation, produced by the Management, three party-addled clones whose only shared attribute is the name "Marika" host and narrate a dance-a-thon on their spaceship, timed to climax with a star going "Kaboom!" outside. Gate-crashers include a time-jumping romantic trying to find a lost girl, a shape-changing bounty hunter (usually Jennifer Harder, imperious in spandex), and a convict called The Kid with an extraterrestrial date (watching he/she/it handle a snack tray is the comic highlight).

John Alexander

Strange doings at the astro-party: Song for a Future Generation

Details

Song for a Future Generation
By Joe Tracz
Under St. Marks Theater
94 St. Marks Place, 212-868-4444

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Song works the lo-fi, sci-fi, futuristic-nostalgia vein: Pool floats line the walls for ultra-mod effect. The ubiquitous soundtrack shows that intergalactic technology hasn't found a cure for '80s pop, with Cyndi Lauper karaoke and the B-52s scoring one of Nicole Beerman's full-ensemble dances, which wedge a lot of energy into a hankie-size theater.

The considerable combined charm of the cast can't hold when hectic zaniness gives way to go-somewhere-quiet breaks and let's-get-deep convos between lost-in-space kids: "a whole generation with too much technology and no idea who we are." Tracz's rumination on alienation among young adult singles relies on his audience's unity through fond memories of the earnest teen movies he's cribbing, like Can't Hardly Wait. The jokes are no less familiar: sub-Jetsons spacetalk ("total No-bots") or the sighed observation that "all the hot ones are robots. Or gay."