TheaterScene

The cast and set (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Disruption

By Deb Miller on August 2, 2026

If AI could guide you through the most important decisions of your life, would you be happy and willing to listen?

That’s the premise of the new play Disruption by Andrew Stein, now playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at Pershing Square Signature Center. It’s a momentous question for our current times, with the ever-encroaching presence of technology and the possibility – or probability – of it completely taking over our lives and minds and determining our future.

Provocatively directed by Hersh Ellis, the unsettling story, punctuated with touches of humor, centers around an AI algorithm being developed by the accomplished and cunning tech entrepreneur Nick (a persuasively manipulative John David Washington) and the brilliant computer programmer Raven (an adamantly driven Emma Kikue). Raven is Nick’s business partner, with a complementary skill set and degrees from MIT and Harvard.

To help launch the complex technology, Nick calls together his three long–time best friends and their wives for dinner and drinks, to present his idea and to encourage their investment in it, so that they can partake of the riches it’s sure to generate. But is it truly their money he wants or something even more fundamental to the success of the algorithm model?

The three couples are introduced in consecutive scenes. It’s clear that the women are not as eager as their husbands to change their plans for the evening so as to meet with Nick, and when they do, they are less than enthusiastic about becoming involved in his AI project. Along with their responses to the dinner invitation, the couples reveal secrets in their backgrounds and current situations and other significant conflicts in their marriages, goals, and relationships.

Irene Sofia Lucio, John David Washington, Jason Ralph (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Ben, a professor at Columbia (gently played by Conrad Ricamora), and Suzie, a psychoanalyst (a forceful and incisive Shaunette Renée Wilson) can’t decide if they should vacation in Machu Picchu or the Galapagos Islands and, more importantly, whether or not they should have a baby. Suzie, who is baby-opposed, is also the most hostile, outspoken, and perceptive critic of Nick and the invasiveness of AI.

The marriage of Jill, a tightly wound corporate lawyer and mother of two (Elizabeth Stanley, who masterfully delivers all the anxiety and tension), and Paul, the art director of a magazine (a more easygoing Joe Tippett), is broken. Her jealous and untrusting call for them to own up to their attraction to others fractures it further.

Jill’s sister Mia, a photographer (an eager Irene Sofia Lucio), and Barry, a surgeon (a more considered Jason Ralph), are divided about her desire to purchase a pricey new residence, which he is concerned they can’t afford, despite his high income.

Shaunette Renée Wilson, Conrad Ricamora (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Those major life issues – should they become parents, should they divorce, should they buy an expensive home? – could be more effectively guided and resolved by the highly advanced algorithm, which exceeds the capacity of the human brain and, with the wealth of data it has gathered and stored (often surreptitiously and unethically), knows us better than we know ourselves. Will the couples give in to wily one-on-one conversations with Nick, the precisely curated coincidences that occur, and the powers of AI? And where will they, he, and Raven find themselves a year later?

Zoë Hurwitz’s evocative and effective scenic design enhances the what-is-soon-to-be theme (she also provides the defining costumes). A futuristic central stage combines the look and feel of a shiny, reflective black computer screen with the curvature and visibility of a fishbowl. The audience watches on both sides; Raven and her digital devices watch at one end. Lighting from Reza Behjat and sound by Caroline Eng contribute to the creepy inhuman sensibility. Telling video design from Yana Biryükova projects the algorithms, data intake, and workings of a computer from the floor on which the cast stands, sits, and moves – sometimes more robotically than naturally (movement direction by Ryan VanDenBoom), and rolls, in the minimalist tables, chairs and props provided by Samantha Shoffner.

With its timely theme of the omnipresent monitoring and collection of our personal data and increasing infringement of AI on all aspects of our lives, often without our knowledge or consent, Disruption is an insightful work that will leave you wondering if the advances we gain from technology are worth the human sacrifices we make.