Allowing Technology to Take Over

The Antiquities

In Jordan Harrison’s new 90-minute drama, the audience pays a visit to the past, the present and an imagined future. It’s not an easy journey. Two narrators greet the audience and tell us that we’re in a museum of artifacts. In bitesize vignettes of varying lengths. There we begin our trip through time in England in 1816. Around a campfire, we’re observing a blossoming new writer, Mary Shelley. She’s about to accept a challenge from her nighttime companions to come up with a scary ghost story to entertain the party. We’ll return to this scene again later at the end of the play to see how her story of Dr. Frankenstein, “the modern Prometheus” who brought us fire, will turn out.

 From there we travel forward in time, stopping at various significant years leading up to, and going far beyond, 2025. In fact, Harrison takes us throughout several decades, all the way into a dystopian future that looks terrifyingly bleak and absolutely hopeless. The dates are projected on an LED digital clock suspended high above the stage, so theatergoers can mark our progress. But then, quite unexpectedly, time reverses. We find that we’re heading backwards toward the beginning again. We notice that we’re revisiting the years and characters we’ve previously encountered to see how everyone’s doing. What’s that they say? Hindsight is 50/50? That must be Jordan Harrison’s intension in this play—to learn what will happen when we allow technology to take over the world and human beings become extinct.

Harrison’s view of a future with robots is nothing like the hit Broadway musical, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING. The playwright shows us through several short, sometimes brutal, scenes that we are probably doomed. The human race, the playwright tells us, can either thrive because of all the many wonderful advances in technology, such as AI; or we can let the computers take over our lives and outlive us. A casual observation of everyone everywhere, constantly staring into the screens of their iPhones, is enough evidence that people are addicted to technology. Such obsessions are existentially dangerous and already out of hand. Eventually, Harrison argues, science won’t serve us; we will serve science.  

This production, like the New York presentation earlier this year, is Co-Directed with power and an unflinching point of view by Chicagoan David Cromer and New York-based Caitlin Sullivan. Goodman’s World Premiere production, co-produced with Playwrights Horizons and Manhattan’s Vineyard Theatre, was nominated for the Lucille Lortel, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best New Production. The short vignettes are told through 47 different characters, portrayed by only 9 actors of various ages. The program only designates their roles as Man 1-4, Woman 1-4 and Boy. The cast is unbelievably strong and captivating. They include Marchant Davis, Layan Elwazani, Andrew Garman, Helen Joo Lee, Aria Shahghasemi, Kristen Sieh, Ryan Spahn, Amelia Workman and Thomas Murphy Molony, playing various young Boys.

A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, is the full title of Jordan Harrison’s play; however, the program simply calls it THE ANTIQUITIES. The concept for the play is that the audience is viewing a collection of exhibits and moving dioramas, presented at a gallery hall. Paul Steinberg’s sparse setting is a series of large burnished metal walls that are somehow reconfigured throughout the show. In every scene a technological invention is featured and used by the characters. Later in the play we’ll see these artifacts isolated in a full-stage display. Refrigerators, sofas and a bar seem to materialize, as if by magic, thanks to Tyler Micoleau’s ingenius Lighting Design. And each cast member transforms into different characters, thanks to both Brenda Abbandandolo’s Costumes and Leah Loukas’ Wigs and Hair Designs.

This is a strangely unsettling play that audiences may either love or hate. While there are some moments of dark humor, the vignettes are often harsh and difficult to watch. Many of the stories presented are either sad or grim, but definitely thought-provoking. In addition to some deeply poignant scenes, however, there are two strangely incongruous moments that feel out of place. They feature characters performing sex acts that neither advance the theme nor feel they belong here. They only serve to shock. Interestingly, Chicago currently has another production  that deals with this same theme. R.U.R. also warns audiences about what can happen when human beings allow technology to take over.                 

Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented May 3-June 1 by the Goodman Theatre in the Owen venue, 170 N. Dearborn, Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling 312-443-3800 or by going to www.GoodmanTheatre.org/Antiquities

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.