The Rest Of Our Lives
The Downstairs Theater at La MaMa | 66 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003
January 7, 2026 - January 17, 2026
The Rest of Our Lives is a work shaped by time as much as by intention, created and performed by Jo Fong and George Orange, who arrive bearing the modestly audacious claim—via the publicity materials—of “100 years of life experience between them.” One hardly needs the arithmetic explained. It is written into their bodies, their timing, their ease with silence, and their refusal to rush toward coherence. And nothing spells out time quite like being told Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” which starts and ends their show was on the Billboard charts 49 years ago! This is a performance that announces, gently but unmistakably, that it has earned the right to be simple. The simplicity, however, is deceptive. The piece is spare, even casual in its presentation, yet it gestures insistently toward the depths that only time can excavate.
Entering the theatre feels less like taking one’s seat for a performance than like crossing the threshold of an old friend’s home. The atmosphere is immediately convivial, unguarded, warmly conspiratorial. Jo and George have no truck with the fourth wall; indeed, they appear mildly offended by the very idea of it. From the outset, they insist upon proximity—emotional, spatial, and communal. We are not observers so much as companions, invited to loiter with them inside this meditation on age, memory, and what remains.
This intimacy is deeply winning. The performers speak conversationally, without theatrical polish, unconcerned with projection or crisp enunciation. That informality reinforces the sense that we are eavesdropping on something personal rather than being presented with something performed. The show’s true eloquence resides not in language but in the body—in gesture, rhythm, weight, and release. The storytelling here is predominantly physical, abetted beautifully by an eclectic and judiciously curated soundtrack that leaps across genres and eras: Leonard Cohen rubs shoulders with Marilyn Manson, Rage Against the Machine communes with Henry Purcell. The music does not merely underscore the action; it converses with it, arguing, consoling, and occasionally mocking.
In one corner of the stage sits a work desk topped with a laptop, from which Jo and George preside as slightly mischievous DJs of the room and of their own lives. Above them, an electronic board flickers with the kinds of questions that artists—and people—of a certain age inevitably find themselves circling: “How does it go from here?” “Am I going to be remembered?” These are not abstract philosophical prompts; they are existential gut punches, rendered all the more unsettling by their bluntness. Other phrases flash by as if in dialogue with these questions like “The struggle is real” offering neither answers nor reassurance, but a wry acknowledgment of the absurdity inherent in trying to metabolize aging through slogans. These questions form the subterranean current of the piece, quietly propelling it forward even as the surface remains light, playful, and disarmingly cheerful.
What is striking is how unburdened Jo and George seem by the weight of these questions. Rather than grappling with them head-on, they sidestep them entirely, offering instead a speculative vision of what the rest of our lives might look like if we chose play over panic, silliness over solemnity, and curiosity over fear. This is not a denial of mortality so much as a refusal to let it dictate the terms of joy.
If you came looking for an overarching narrative arc, you are in the wrong theater. The work unfolds as a loose constellation of vignettes—some fleeting, some luxuriantly extended—that charm, amuse, and occasionally startle. George’s early solo comes in the form of a balletic, emotionally unguarded dance to Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” a tenderly absurd homage to the aging clown. The number knowingly tips its hat to a younger, more elastic George, its humor sharpened by self-awareness and generosity rather than bitterness.
Elsewhere, Jo and George engage in a peculiar pas de deux set to Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love,” where Jo’s body becomes ironing board-stiff, cadaverous, while George labors—visibly, deliberately—with the macabre effort of carrying her…perhaps her wheelchair is in the repair shop. The dance is funny, yes, but also oddly moving, a meditation on care, endurance, and the unglamorous labor of staying connected. Is it in this instance that Jo shouts, “He’s 58!?”
Audience participation is embraced…Jo distributes ping pong paddles to a few lucky audience members…actually to more than a few…actually to the entire front row on all three sides of the audience. And then a few balls…actually more than a few. George turns up with a huge box of ping pong balls…and then another box. With Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, as its soundtrack, balls are sailing through the air literally everywhere. We learn how competitive our fellow audience members are. H. T. Chen & Dancers, the next company to occupy the space at the end of January, will still be finding ping pong balls where they least expect them.
The finale, where the Downstairs Theater at La MaMa morphs into a 70s dancehall, is genuinely exhilarating, sending the audience out into the night giddy, uplifted, and vibrating with borrowed energy. The slow dance is Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” and then again Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” blasts through the speakers. After 80 minutes Jo and George are feeling the audience’s love returned to them in a big way.
The Rest of Our Lives is profoundly simple in its premise, and we are glad Jo and George aren’t attempting a broader vision of what the rest of our life could entail beyond the play and dance. Then again, if this is what it turns out to be—irreverent, embodied, communal, and joyfully unafraid—to quote the ever luminous Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing.”
Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on January 18th, 2026. All rights reserved.
