This Beautiful Future Tickets

This Beautiful Future plays at the Cherry Lane Theatre for six weeks in fall 2022. Get This Beautiful Future tickets on New York Theatre Guide now. 

This Beautiful Future is a play about falling in love when the rest of the world is falling apart. This love story takes place in France in August 1944, at the height of World War II, where we meet two teenagers: the 16-year-old German soldier Otto and 17-year-old French girl Elodie. Rather, they meet each other, and a sweet first love blossoms. They find cover in an abandoned house, where they can escape the world for a while and simply talk, dance, and kiss, as teenagers are inclined to do.

Of course, that very sweetness and innocence that endears them to each other is what dooms their relationship. Otto is a Nazi, who's become so indoctrinated that he doesn't fully understand just how horrible his and his fellow soldiers' mission is. Neither does Elodie. Though his membership in the enemy force gives her pause, her naivete — toward the death toll, toward Otto's personal contribution to it — lets her fall for him anyway. But while the two of them are alone, they're just two young people hoping for a long, peaceful life with each other, however warped that idea truly is. This Beautiful Future wonders what its young protagonists' present and future would look like were it not for a world that is slowly destroying them.

Playwright Rita Kalnejais has said of her show, "I wrote This Beautiful Future in 2016 when every election just turned out so badly - I wanted to write something tender that held the vulnerability of the characters beyond their politics. I wanted the young characters - so shaped by the violence around them - to experience something so pure in their connection that it felt revolutionary. I hope New York audiences feel some of the intensity, sweetness, and ache of that sitting together in The Cherry Lane."

This Beautiful Future debuted in London to widespread praise in 2017. The show had its stateside premiere run in January 2022 at Theatrelab, marking Kalnejais's New York debut. This Beautiful Future off Broadway sold out and received equal critical acclaim. 

This included praise for its four-person cast; three of those actors return for the latest iteration of This Beautiful Future in New York. New York theatre fixture Austin Pendleton and Tony Award winner Angelina Fiordellisi reprise their roles as a pair of elders that act as foils to the young protagonist, alongside Francesca Carpanini as Elodie. They're joined by Uly Schlesinger, of HBO Max's Genera+ion, making his New York stage debut.

Tickets to This Beautiful Future on New York Theatre Guide are available now.

By: Rita Kalnejais
Director: Jack Serio
Cast list: Francesca Carpanini (as Elodie), Angelina Fiordellisi (as Angelina), Austin Pendleton (as Austin), Uly Schlesinger (as Otto)
Design: Frank J. Oliva
Lighting: Stacey Derosier
Costume: Ricky Reynoso
Sound: Christopher Darbassie
Other info: Projection design by Lacey Erb