Tomorrow We Love takes place in 1960 in the fictional town of Noble Bay, California. In the very first scene, we meet our main heroine: Elaine Millicent Mulligan Fairbanks (played by Jeffrey Vause), AKA “Lainie”, a well-to-do, middle-aged housewife living in a lovely house on the Pacific coast. Lainie is also the doting mother of a pretty and brainy college-aged daughter named Trippy (Sarah Sanou). Sounds idyllic, right? Unfortunately, our “noble” matriarch is not having a good day. She’s on trial for… MURDER(!)– and in the opening of Tomorrow We Love, the audience gets a front seat to her trial. Right away, the tone of Jeffrey Vause and Steve Hauck’s comedy is set when Judge Josiah Turpin (Robet Sebastian Webb) instructs the defendant to remove her sunglasses, adding, “This is a court of law, not a Lana Turner tearjerker!” Oh, really?…
Tomorrow We Love then tells the whole hilariously sordid story, in flashback style: Nearing the 20th year of her marriage, Lainie fears that her husband Arthur is cheating on her with his secretary Pamela. In the meantime, many other characters have a vested interest in Lainie’s upcoming divorce. Her with “friends” like this you don’t need enemies, Lucille Spellman (Jimmy Moon) and her lawyer husband Sid (Robert Sebastian Webb again), are desperately trying to get Lainie to sign some papers to give them power of authority, in hopes to “protect” her from her greedy soon-to-be ex-husband. At the same time, Lainie’s daughter Trippy may be pregnant, thanks to her beach bum counterculture/proto-New Age boyfriend Logan (Phoebe Lloyd). Of course, no story of murder, divorce, adultery, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and deception would be complete without a torrid affair. For Lainie, that comes in the form of the muscular and charming Farley Weathers (Alex Herrera), who manages to get Lainie’s stockings unstraightened. It’s no mystery to the audience that Lucille and Sid are deliciously manipulative. but what are the true intentions of Hollywood bad boy Farley? Will Elaine Millicent Mulligan Fairbanks be set free, or will she wind up in a remake of the 1960 movie Caged with Elanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead?
Tomorrow We Love is Inspired by the movies of by Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows) and other melodramas ranging from the 40’s to the 60’s. (Mildred Pierce and 1966’s Madame X come to mind.) This bawdy comedy is patently campy, overindulgent, and larger than life. While these aforementioned movies which inspired the play were undoubtedly meant to be taken VERY seriously when they first entertained audiences on the movie screen, watching them in a 2024 lens merely points out just how… well, MELODRAMATIC these melodramas were. There were lush settings, heavy-handed dialogue augmented with dramatic music, and eye-popping fashions. Of course, being a product of the times, there were VERY rigid roles for the sexes– especially for women. There were “good” girls and “bad” girls, with Jeffrey Vause’s Lainie being the classic trope of the devoted wife and mother who’s suffering under the repressive patriarchy of the time. Tomorrow We Love also explores how the secrets hiding beneath the surface of an affluent “all American” town are always ready to rise up to the surface. As in the then-scandalous 1956 novel Peyton Place (which is also referenced in this play), there’s a lot of vintage vice hidden underneath the manicured lawns and between the white picket fences, including but not limited to… (all together again now!) murder, divorce, adultery, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, deception, and torrid affairs. There are even rumors of homosexuality, and (Gasp!) marijuana. But perhaps the biggest “sin” of all is the hypocrisy and sanctimonious behavior of the residents of Noble Bay. As Lainie declares in the first scene, “This little town is a stinking cesspool of heartless judgement!”
Smoothly directed by Steven Hauck, Tomorrow We Love features a true ensemble cast of six talented actors; all the performers seem to revel in the play’s outrageous situations and deliciously decadent dialogue. That dialogue includes seemingly infinite references to 1950’s culture, such as one character declaring “I took a Sominex and fell asleep watching a Dragnet rerun!” and another sharing, “I just took a Dexatrim. Caffeine would send me into orbit like Sputnik!” Everyone in the cast plays it over-the-top, which of course suits this piece perfectly. Jeffrey Vause, who wrote the story, seems to be having the time of his life in the gender-bending role of Lainie, even when our heroine is steeped in 1950’s-women’s movie-style tragedy. As Lainie’s scheming frenemy Lucille, Jimmy Moon is equally excellent as Lucille. While Vause’s and Moon’s performances can easily be labeled “drag”, it’s more accurate to say that their roles are paying campy yet loving tribute to some enduring female archetypes of the 40’s and 50’s, which arguably set the stage for the art of drag for decades to come. Robert Sebastian Webb is perfectly cast as snaky lawyer Sid Spellman, the kind of character audiences love to hate. Alex Herrera is equally excellent as Farley Weathers, in a “stud” role that both seduces the female characters yet makes the audience just a bit wary of his true intentions. Phoebe Lloyd’s Logan and Sarah Sanou’s Trippy are the youngsters who serve to bridge the gap between the conformist 50’s and the rebellious 60’s. While the “groovy” couple may be a prophecy for the more enlightened perspectives coming to American culture, the characters are no less over-the-top as their older counterparts. The costumes, by Jimmy Moon, are true crowd-pleasers; the female characters’ assorted 50’s- style fashions provoked both awe and laughter from the audience as soon as they made their first appearance on stage.
The campy climax of Tomorrow We Love comes with Lainie’s much-anticipated 20th anniversary party (SPOILER: Her husband does NOT show up…), complete with Drambouie Jello shots. There’s even dancing, with the entire cast “getting down” to Chubby Checker’s The Twist. But even bigger twists lie ahead for this cavalcade of colorful, kooky characters. Put another way, there are multiple endings, one of which even makes way for a sequel…! Hmmm…
Tomorrow We Love continues through Sunday, June 23, at The Chain Theatre, 312 West 36th Street #4th floor, NYC. Visit http://www.TomorrowWeLove for tickets and more information!
(Photos by Paul Siebold and James Hodges.)
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