What Once We Felt

"What Once We Felt," a futuristic thriller by Ann Marie Healy that is receiving its New York premiere through Lincoln Center Theater's new emerging playwrights program, imagines an Orweillian society in a parallel universe that has just undergone a mysterious shift in power referred to as the "transition."

Here, books have been replaced by condensed digital downloads. There are only women, but even they have been divided into two separate classes: Keepers, who are apparently healthy, and Tradepacks, who have been either subjected to social subjugation or murdered in a mass genocide. Humorless border guards determine whether one is a Keeper or a Tradepack at first by reading an ID card and later by pricking a needle into the back of one's neck.

Numerous subplots run through the play, most notably that of Macy, an expressive young author with ambitions to write the last published print novel of all time. But in order to make the deal go through, Macy consents to several Faustian bargains. She is first asked to secretly lend her ID card to a media mogul who needs it in order to "download a child" by computer. Later on, Macy's line editor turns her innocent work of imaginative fiction into biased government propaganda.

Healy deserves credit for building an unusual premise with an ambitious amount of storytelling, but the play itself falls under its heavy weight and fails to recover. It would certainly help if audience members had a glossary that explained the Healy's vocabulary.

Ken Rus Schmoll's shadowy, intimate production feels too slow and stale to make this alternative world feel threatening instead of just bizarre. The cast works hard to imbue their characters with emotion and urgency, but they often seem at sea and at odds with each other.

The Duke, 229 W. 42nd St., 646-223-3010, lct3.org. Through Nov. 21.