←Recommendations of This Will Be Our Year

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.

Ali MacLean has created one of those unique plays where you are (internally or literally) yelling out at both Hugo and Gen to do the right thing or to not do the self-destructive thing, or to do so many things that you know you yourself wouldn't do just like Hugo and Gen if you were in their shoes. It's a play that is heart-achingly sad, raw, tender, and gets you feeling so much so quickly. I couldn't believe I was done with the play when I reached the last page. Ali is a playwright to watch and produce. Read this.

This Will Be Our Year follows Gen and Hugo from their first meeting on through years and years of love and destruction, and sometimes those two things look a lot alike. This play focuses in on a complex relationship so deeply and skillfully. The writing is masterful -- it has you laughing one minute, then falling apart emotionally the next. It'll transport you. Read it, love it, produce it now!