←Recommendations of This Will Be Our Year

I recently experienced "This Will Be Our Year" via a Zoom reading and it really is an 'experience'. The dialogue is fast and keeps you captivated with it's quick-witted allure. Yet, the toxicity of this relationship is so palpable you just want to turn away from it...while also wanting to know what happens next. This push and pull creates a beautiful rollercoaster ride of emotions, of which Ali expertly maneuvers.

Full disclosure, I've participated in several different readings of this play, and I couldn't be prouder to have been a part of each one of them. This play is a funny, heartbreaking, raw, unrelenting, moving journey into toxic love and the overwhelming power of falling in love with the right person for you, who also happens to be absolutely wrong for you. Toxic people may genuinely love you, but that doesn't mean they'll ever change. They'll stab you in the lungs and then ask why you're having trouble breathing. It's a powerful and beautiful play.

This is a beautiful, funny and heartbreaking play that tells the story of two people and their forbidden love. It's fast paced, witty and touches deep into the soul and the heartstrings! I was wondering whether to root for the two or not, and that's the beauty of Ali's writing. She succeeds at giving incredibly flawed human beings a platform to be who they are; an everlasting connection to people reading or listening to the play.

The creeping promise of hope in a new love. The sickening souring of a relationship that you don't want to let go of. MacLean captures the lifetime of the relationship between Gen and Hugo wonderfully, with charm and realism in equal measure. Even as the characters careen towards heartbreak, you can't help but hope that they'll come out on the other side unscathed.

MacLean has written an incredibly gripping and meticulous implosion with This Will Be Our Year. Hugo and Gen are drawn in exquisite detail and their journey over the course of years leaves a mark on the audience. By the end of the play you feel like you truly know these characters - their fears, their hopes, their flaws - and I personally spent a long time afterwards ruminating on their situation and what could have gone right before it all went horribly wrong.

An enthralling delve into a difficult and compelling relationship. MacLean really knows how to write bravura roles for actors, and any actor would be lucky to land in a production of this play, particularly if they are playing Hugo or Gen. The roles are packed with humor, passion, guilt, selfishness, need, longing, and most of all, love. You root for them, want to warn them, love to weep with them. This play stays with you. Beautifully done.

In "This Will Be Our Year," Ali MacLean gives us a devastating portrait of unrequited love replete with beauty, pain, humanity, and humor. With wickedly funny, rapid-fire dialogue, Ali creates a star-crossed pair who are destined to love each other as fiercely as they push each other away--and yet we root for them from start to finish. This play draws you in like a romantic comedy, then punches you in the gut like the tragedy it ultimately is. And yet, we are still holding out hope for Hugo and Gen...even after 'end of play.'

In this funny and ultimately heartbreaking modern tale of love and longing, Ali MacLean, with brutal honesty, draws us into a relationship that cannot fully manifest. Each scene takes a surprising turn in the evolution (or devolution) of the years long affair between a sexy Brit rocker Hugo and his sassy, edgy American love interest Gen. MacLean's real and witty dialogue connects us to these frighteningly relatable characters. We understand these people, with their pain and flaws, even as they come undone. And then, after experiencing this harrowing journey of unfulfilled love, the ending is wise and satisfying.

In Ali MacLean’s “This Will Be Our Year” the dialogue crackles and pops with energy. The play’s protagonists Gen and Hugo are honestly portrayed. The cursed lovers are filled with self-effacing humor, realistic flaws and sympathetic vulnerability. We need to see and experience these type of characters more onstage and in the theatre.

Ali MacLean has an incredible ability to build sympathetic, multi-dimensional characters who you root for even as they implode. Gen and Hugo's early interactions are as charming as their final interactions are wrenching and devastating. MacLean both shows the sometimes inescapable trap of a toxic relationship while simultaneously illustrating the slow-burn disease that is addiction. There are some huge, catastrophic events towards the end, but they are incredibly well-earned and foreshadowed. It is a testament to how wonderfully made these characters are that I can see the self-destruction and feel for them until the very end.