Washburn summons an eschatological vision as an occasion to ask (and I quote), “What would happen to a pop culture narrative pushed past the fall of civilization?” In answer, she weaves a resonant and richly layered play for our post-appropriation era, one brimming with ideas about all the ways in which we Americans write our own fate. Morris, Gibson Frazier, and Nedra McClyde. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, currently in production at Playwrights Horizons under the astute direction of Steve Cosson, and performed by the gifted ensemble of Matthew Maher, Colleen Werthmann, Sam Breslin Wright, Susannah Flood, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Jennifer R. This and other questions lurk inside of Anne Washburn’s inspired and invigorating tale of post-apocalypse America, Mr. In Susan Sontag’s essay on science fiction, “The Imagination of Disaster,” she remarks that its narratives reflect “the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence.” Noting as well the narcissism that propels a culture to project itself as the final word, perhaps the apocalypse-with its punitive destruction of all that has come before, and its future of no future-can also be read as an anxious vision, a tantrum of sorts, of a society suffering from a systemic lack of imagination? (It is of no comfort to observe that in our politically fractured, post-Empire America, one of the few unifying sentiments is an impending sense of doom.) We may be besieged by flesh-eating zombies, obliterated by a rogue asteroid, enslaved by alien invaders, wiped out by a pandemic, or meet our maker by way of an as yet unimagined horror: All remains to be seen. Film, television, and literature are of course the most prolific purveyors of sensational apocalyptic visions, offering an array of endings to suit every demographic.

THE END, whether it is near or not, is certainly upon us: The contemporary American imagination is seized by the terror that we-here, now-are civilization’s last sigh.

Morris), Susannah (Susannah Flood), Gibson (Gibson Frazier), Sam (Sam Breslin Wright), and Matt (Matthew Maher). Performance view, Playwrights Horizons, New York.

Burns, a Post-Electric Play, 2013, in a production directed by Steve Cosson with music by Michael Friedman.

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