"The Antiquities" is Superbly Up-to-Date

History, they say, is written by the winners and the winners in Jordan Harrison’s thought-provoking new play The Antiquities are the artificial intelligence entities that the play imagines will eventually replace human beings. The time seems to be somewhere in the late 22nd century and the setting is a history museum that gives the play its full formal title: A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities. 

And so each of the play’s scenes represents an exhibit centered on a distinct time period, ranging from 1816 to 2240, in which humans wrestle in one degree or another with technology. The first exhibit is a re-creation of the now legendary evening in which Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and their friend the physician John Polidori challenged one another to come up with the best horror story. Mary won with her tale "Frankenstein" about a scientist who uses his skills to give life to an inanimate creature.  

Other exhibits focus on rural 19th century laborers adjusting to factory work, a 20th century family getting its first dial-up computer, 21st century techies fine-tuning the voice for a Siri-like digital assistant and a writer a few decades later consulting with her doctor about a digital implant that will make her smarter.

In each case trade-offs are made. The humans in every era believe that the new technology will make life easier, longer and perhaps may even develop a way to make them immortal. But at the same time, they are also giving up more and more power to the inanimate but increasingly powerful entities they’ve created.

Now I don’t usually go in for this kind of speculative sci-fi stuff but Harrison is the author of Marjorie Prime, a drama about a future in which holograms of the dead serve as companions to those left behind. And it was so finely and sensitively rendered that it was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  

And Harrison is just as effective here, refusing to give in to the usual dystopian tropes that fuel so many current movies and TV series but also sidestepping the future-is-ours optimism that dominated so much of the last century.  Instead, he asks, what makes humankind believe that evolution stops with us? (click here to read more of what he has to say).

He's aided by a cast of nine incredibly ambidextrous actors, who, with the help of Brenda Abbandandolo’s sly costumes—and what must be an army of quick-change dressers—transform themselves into dozens of distinct characters, sometimes so completely that they’re not recognizable from one scene to the next.  

The show’s set design by Paul Steinberg is futuristic sleek, its lighting by Tyler Micoleau is nimble and its subtle sound design by Christopher Darbassie creates a soundscape that is just slightly—but totally appropriately—off-kilter. 

Holding it all together is the sure-handed direction of David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan. I have no idea how they divided their directorial duties but the result is seamless. Without undermining the seriousness of the questions Harrison’s script raises or fabricating feel-good answers, they find a way to make room for the humor and the sexiness he’s also tucked into it. 

It's anyone's guess what some entity in the future might make of this play, a co-production of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, the Vineyard Theatre and Playwrights Horizons that has just been extended at Playwrights Horizons through March 2, but right now it’s a superb demonstration of what humans can do.