Things look dark? Seeing double? Hope on the horizon!

If the news isn’t sobering enough, the new theater season is, to date, long on brilliant performances, but also on messages that rarely warm the heart. Much of the humor is bleak to black. From Shakespeare to Beckett to chilling new works from Anne Washburn and Regina Taylor that envision our future as a nightmare landscape where too much technology and/or a doomsday environment robs us of normalcy and our planet seems to be in big trouble.
In Washburn’s “Mr. Burns, A Post-electric Play,” a troupe of survivors gather in a woody enclave on the run from a nuclear meltdown that has decimated America’s populace and turn to acting out a popular episode from “The Simpsons” as their only hope for sanity in a plagued America. Can they find answers in our past for a viable future?
There are thoughtful insights in their escapist storytelling, as they valiantly try to find a way to combat the disaster technology has wrought. This is a play I feel I must see again to sort out Washburn’s chilling message that this is not the first time a civilization has come to the edge of extinction. But where does America find a way to be spiritually and even physically reborn? The brilliant simplicity with which the playwright’s doomsday scenario is presented — with taut, imaginative direction by Steve Cosson — is a wonder you must explore for yourself as you ponder the portent of a “post-electric” world. Currently playing through Oct. 6, but hopefully extended at Playwrights Horizon, 416 West 42nd St. Tickets at (212) 279-4200 or ticketcentral.com.
I could not buy into Taylor’s vision of a Chicago book publishing company where the staff is about to be cut due to its falling business. And the play’s exploration of what the future of America holds for a populace whom technology is now rapidly turning into extraneous baggage as our youth evolve into techno-dominated creatures that can create and recreate their lives within their own minds. That’s the danger Taylor’s “stop-reset” poses — but not convincingly. (Pershing Square Signature Theater, 480 West 42nd St., tickets at 212-244-7529 or signaturetheatre.org.)

Seeing double!
A season bringing us two new revivals of both “Romeo and Juliet” and “Waiting For Godot” offers hope that happy endings are superfluous when the Bard and Samuel Beckett are sending the message that tragedy and uncertainty are our lot, but somehow humanity has plowed on through the vicissitudes of fate down the ages. Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart will arrive at the Cort Theater on Oct. 26, to deliver Beckett’s sobering but endlessly provocative message. Meanwhile, the first-ever Yiddish version of “Waiting For Godot” is currently enthralling fortunate visitors to the New Yiddish Rep’s magnificently acted version of this existential road trip now lighting the Castillo Theatre. It is one of the most memorably performed versions of “Godot” this critic has ever seen, with powerful English (and Russian) subtitles clearly enabling audiences to further appreciate Beckett’s reflective tale that it is man’s fate to wait for a Messiah, a savior who may never come … will likely never come? But mankind’s heroism is persevering in a universe where nothing is certain, where hope can evaporate like so much dust. And when ”there’s nothing to be done” our saving grace is to keep on keeping on in an endless wish that tomorrow — or the next day — there will be answers.
So when two itinerant tramps, David Mandelbaum’s old, crotchety Estragon —endlessly, painfully clutching at his badly booted aching feet — and Shane Baker’s younger, more solid Vladimir — encounter the sadistic Pozzo (a superb turn by versatile Avi Hoffman) and his slave Gogo (Rafael Goldwasser an unforgettable scene stealer as the latter is bound to his master by a jerking rope). Beckett’s imagination soars in the pairing. But the four men — after a most memorable encounter — end up doing nothing together — and soon part company.
They will reunite in a second act, where a bare tree — the only set — has grown two green leafs. But Pozzo shows up blind, Lucky has gone mute — and the quartet, as we leave them, are still waiting — with only a charming young messenger having arrived to first enlighten Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will not be coming that evening — but maybe tomorrow. The tramps resolve to leave … why wait? But there they remain, rooted to their endless optimism by habit — despite serious signs of the contrariness of fate — that just maybe — tomorrow there will be answers. Make it a must to go “wait for Godot” with this achingly human, haunting troupe. (Through Oct. 13, but hopefully extended. (543 West 42nd St. Tickets at 212-914-1234 or www.newyiddishrep.org)

CRITIC'S ALERT: On Sept. 30, Town Hall’s rafters will be ringing with impresario Scott Siegel’s 10th Annual “Broadway Unplugged,” this year joined by “Baritones Unbound.” Iconic Tony winners, to opera stars and fast track dazzling young new talents including Liza Callaway, Tonya Pinkins, Marc Kudish and opera greats John Esterlin and Jeff Matsey, will be singing without microphones. Always a night to treasure, remaining tickets right now at www.ticketmaster.com or the Town Hall Box Office, 123 West 43rd St.