What We Once Felt at LCT3

Location

LCT3 is part of the Lincoln Center Theater's program, where they produce plays by new playwrights in a theater off of the Lincoln Center campus.  All tickets are $20 and it's a great opportunity to see emerging talent.  I went to see their latest production, called What We Once Felt by Ann Marie Healy.  The play was unusual, to say the least.  It takes place in the future - a future where only women exist.  All of the relationships are lesbian, and women are inseminated by swallowing a pill that they can download off of the Internet.  This new society is undergoing a great degree of upheaval, due to the presence of Traypacks, an ambiguous population that has been designated as distinctly second class.  The protagonist is a young novelist who is desperate to get her book published, and will stop at practically nothing to achieve this goal.  She is a curious character because she is fiery and insolent, but after all of her screaming she always ends up giving in in the most passive way.  Every character engages in morally questionable acts, but it is hard to judge since we are unsure of the proper code of ethics for this new society.  Questions of contemporary society flow through the play, such as abortion, genetic engineering, racism, classicism, homosexuality, and health care - in fact the play is quite loaded.  Healy never seems to take a clear position, however, and so the play ends with a lot of unanswered questions about her intentions.  She has a great gift for comedy but is distinctly lacking in an ability to write serious monologues, and so the play veers back and forth between being a surprising delight and a didactic lethargy.  But the comedy far outweighs the heavy-handedness, and all of the questions posed are interesting, whether or not they are answered in the end.  To be sure, your conversations afterward will be lively.