Elizabeth A. Davis plays Gail and Dan Amboyer is Ben in Max Mondi’s often metatheatrical drama Maybe Tomorrow, directed by Chad Austin.
Inspired by a true story, Max Mondi’s Maybe Tomorrow is a new drama that pushes the envelope on what it means to get stuck in the present. Directed by Chad Austin, this play takes a deep dive into mental illness and more.
The story follows Gail (Elizabeth A. Davis), a bead-jewelry artist, and her husband, Ben (Dan Amboyer), an automotive expert, who live in a mobile home in Vermont. However, after Gail becomes pregnant and Ben gets a job in New Jersey, they move their mobile home there. Instead of adapting to their new surroundings and enjoying their newborn son Benjie, Gail gradually shows signs of postpartum depression. When she reaches a breaking point, she rushes into the bathroom to escape Benjie’s crying and then screams into her elbow. Suddenly she turns to the audience and tries to pretend that she finds motherhood fulfilling:
Hey, guys. How’s it going? … Ben and I just had a kid. It’s been great. Everyone always says how having a baby is the best thing that could ever happen to you and … they’re right.
Ben and Gail face off in Maybe Tomorrow, a new drama that blurs the line between what’s real and not real.
Curiously, it’s only Gail who sees the audience. In fact, when Ben occasionally hears Gail talking to the people outside the fourth wall, he asks her who she’s speaking to. Perhaps questioning her own sanity, Gail responds: “No one.” Strangely, Ben doesn’t press his wife any further nor tries to get professional help for her, even when she’s been in isolation for 94 days and counting.
The unspoken question that weighs heavily in Mondi’s drama is: What do Gail and Ben owe each other? That Ben stands by as Gail is erased by her mental illness is deeply disturbing. So is the fact that Gail, though she can design bead jewelry and run a successful Etsy store from her bathroom, isn’t able to be a supportive wife and mother to Ben and Benjie. Indeed, there is a finer person within each spouse. But all too often one only witnesses how they fight and fail each other.
While Gail’s depression continues to manifest itself during the play, Ben also contributes to it. Ben, who is younger than Gail, often acts immature and is prone to making fatuous comments when Gail is going through an emotional crisis. Case in point. Ben, inebriated after drinking three bourbons to celebrate Gail’s pregnancy, tries to convince his sobbing wife that she’s making a mountain out of a molehill by worrying about raising a child in a mobile home:
Ben: How hard is it? Really?
Gail: Raising a child?
Ben: They’re like cats. As long as you feed them, they’re fine.
The play continually blurs the line between what is real and what is not real. While this works well when Gail talks about going to the theater as a child—“I used to go to plays with my aunt a lot, and it always bothered me anytime they talked about a character who never actually came out on stage”—it becomes confusing when Gail begins to question whether Benjie is a figment of her imagination:
When was the last time I saw him? I remember being pregnant. I remember having a baby. … Or, I thought I remember being pregnant. But people fictionalize memories all the time.
Davis and Amboyer star as Gail and Ben star in a drama inspired by a true story about a woman who lived two years in her bathroom. Photographs by Grace Copeland.
Mondi, who reportedly wrote Maybe Tomorrow while he worked as a literary assistant on a production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, has apparently been influenced by Beckett’s surreal play in which its protagonist, Winnie, is buried waist-deep in the earth. Gail might not be sinking into the earth, but she certainly is Winnie’s dramatic cousin by being attached to a toilet seat.
Abingdon Theatre artistic director Austin has chosen his cast well. Not only do Davis and Amboyer as Gail and Ben, respectively, have good chemistry, but they persuasively portray a married couple going through tough times.
Josafath Reynoso has whipped up a bathroom that could be featured in the glossy pages of House Beautiful, replete with toilet, sink, bathtub with claw feet, towel racks, and laundry hamper. These fixtures are set within a transparent cage-like structure with no walls, framed by gold-colored bars. Of course, it’s possible that this posh powder room is a fabrication of Gail’s imagination. But, then again, who knows?
Maybe Tomorrow, with its bizarre premise of a woman being stuck to a toilet seat, seems like an improbable fiction to put on stage. But when one realizes that it’s actually based on a true story, it not only gains more gravitas, it invites one to ponder just what stories belong in the contemporary theater.
Max Mondi’s Maybe Tomorrow plays through April 6 at A.R.T./New York Theatres. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and at 8 p.m. Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit abingdontheatre.org.
Playwright: Max Mondi
Director: Chad Austin
Sets: Josafath Reynoso
Lighting: Dawn Chiang
Costumes: Siena Zoë Allen
Sound: Evdoxia Ragkou
