In Five Years

Tony-nominated Broadway star Megan Hilty proves to be an ideal narrator, effortlessly assuming (almost-)always-in-control Dannie and her free-spirited best friend, Bella. In the evening after a near-perfect day—accepting the perfectly orchestrated marriage proposal after wowing her interviewers for her ideal job—Dannie falls into an exhausted sleep. She’s startled awake five years into the future in a bed, an apartment, and with a man she absolutely doesn’t recognize but most definitely can’t resist. And then she wakes up for real this time, back in her own home with her familiar fiancé. Disturbed but determined, Dannie makes sure life continues according to plan, until four years later, that dreamy stranger reappears: he’s Bella’s new lover (finally, a real keeper this time) and he’s renovating that same loft. Can Dannie escape a future that shouldn’t possibly be hers? With affecting nuance and gentle empathy, Hilty is crisply convincing as Dannie, softly breathy as Bella. The BFFs’ interactions are especially resonating, from gleeful to joyous, disappointed and dismissive, desperate and forgiving.