Andrew Garman, Amelia Workman, Julius Rinzel (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

The Antiquities

By Julia Polinsky

Two women, one heavily pregnant, dressed in the style of the early 19^th Century, stand at the front of the dimly lit stage, and peer out into the audience as if it were a museum display. "Thank you for coming," they say, as if they are trying out funny, antiquated language. Also, "look alive," a phrase so ironic, you wince, because these two are not women; they're entities, post-human intelligences in a post-human age. Coming from them, "look alive" is patronizing.

To hear them tell it, as they stare at us and speak in their enhanced, amplified voices, life as a human, with a body, was limited. They talk about time, about distance, about beginning and ending as if those concepts were unimaginably foreign. And then they walk us through A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, or just The Antiquities, Jordan Harrison's stunning new play at Playwrights Horizons.

 

Kristin Sieh, Amelia Workman (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

The Museum of Late Human Antiquities displays the Late Human era over hundreds of years. Each exhibit, labeled with a supertitle, is set in a different date, with different people, all played by the excellent cast (Cindy Cheung, Marchant Davis, Layan Elwazani, Andrew Garman, Julius Rinzel, Aria Shahghasemi, Kristen Sieh, Ryan Spahn, and Amelia Workman), who each perform at least four roles.

The stories begin as Exhibit 1816 when the entities join three men, also dressed in early 19^th century style, sitting around a fire. They are the poets Byron and Shelley, and Byron's physician; the women/entities become Claire, Byron's mistress, and Mary Shelley. When the bored poets require an evening's entertainment, out come ghost stories. Mary, who had lost a baby a few months earlier, wonders if she could bring back the dead, using fire and lightning. Thus, the tale of Frankenstein, the invention that overtook and destroyed its creator, is born.

All the exhibits showcase humans interacting with technology, for better or worse, often at times of horrible emotion - grief, rage, fear. Some of the more memorable:

Exhibit 1978 shows Stuart, who is celebrating having "made a life," which is a robot. 1994, a family with a computer accessing the Internet for the first time.

2008: granddaughter helps grandpa set up his new iPhone and explains the internet to him. 2023: a corporate lawyer offering a settlement to a would-be whistleblower who worked developing AI. 2076, humans in a war against the "inorganics." 2240: the last humans, churning butter and discussing whether having sex to save the human race is even worth bothering.

Andrew Garman, Ryan Spahn, Cindy Cheung, Layan Elwazani (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

At the midpoint of the play, a museum display of objects on lit pedestals showcase artifacts of human technology through time. Fire. Lightbulb. Dial phone. Video tape (Betamax, which gets a laugh). PC; flip phone; smartphone. then, the technology display gives way to non-tech objects. A teddy bear, an arm cast, a clarinet, a crop top. The tour ponders what these objects meant to humans, how we invested them with emotion and meaning. Why? Implicit: why bother?

Then the play folds back into itself; each of the exhibits from the first part gets closure in the second. We watch the human race give away its human-ness to technology in exhibit after exhibit: talking to the dead grandfather on his iPhone; maintaining a blog for a dead lover; burying the robot designer; a prosthetic finger given to a boy who has lost his to a machine ("Now you're a machine, too.")

Back to 1816, where Mary Shelley tells her horror story, of a man who made a monster and used electricity to bring it to life - she says its real name was Computer. At the end, when the monster in her tale kills its creator, it says that the time of humans is over.

The group of poets and free spirits can't accept that. They celebrate the physicality of being alive: swimming, pregnancy, warm breezes. Yet the two woman/entities return to the front of the stage, look out into the audience, and speak of time, evolution, and humans being no more than a transitional species.

For a play with such a minimalist design, The Antiquities is gorgeous to look at. Paul Steinberg's scenic design of movable brushed-metal walls, paired with Tyler Micoleau's ominously beautiful lighting, create a seductive atmosphere of high-tech apprehension. Excellent costume design from Branda Abbandandolo ranges from historically accurate to future-chic imaginative to not-quite rags.

David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan directed; however they divided directorial duties, the outcome is seamless. That outcome: perhaps the world ends, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the endlessness of always being on. Perhaps The Antiquities is a careful, beautiful cautionary tale. Perhaps we can remain human, with our messy emotions and chaotic lives in between the ones and zeros of digital life. Perhaps.

The Antiquities

At Playwrights Horizons

416 W 42^nd St.

Through February 23