“Ancient” Review: Late human life relics at 12 exhibitions

With a campfire on the coast of Lake Geneva in 1816, five friends will talk about the most scary story. Mary Sherry is obviously a winner, a moving monster achieves a sense, and then a warning story of her guards running in the wild (soon becoming a novel), her warning story (soon becomes a novel. ) Her friend's bylon Lord was very surprised, so his immediate, full reaction -“You are dementia” -The prayer quickly turns into a tremor and prayer.

“Don't be wise enough to make us and make an alternative.”

In only 424 years later, in 2240, the existence of two human postponers looked back on the whole Vinnet and the whole mankind. How did people think themselves as an evolution endpoint? One of these inorganic intelligence is rated when human beings are clearly “migrating” and “timeline brip”.

The timeline is an attractive structural device opened in Play Light Horizons, even if it is a slightly overwhelming structural device of Jordan Harrison's play “The ANTIQUITIES”. Starting with Sherry's monster (she refuts to a “computer”), and ends at the end of humanity, to map one possible route, Via Technologica, from romantic glory to romantic glory. You can get a terrible hierarchical contest itself. The end of the seed.

The 2240 inorganic is here to fill it, not to praise humanity. They are the guide of the “exhibition”, although the alternative title of the play is called “Tour of the Permanent Collection at the late Ancient Museum of Full Humans”. The shelly scene is the first of such 12 exhibits, indicating that the invention has gradually overtook natural intelligence and destroyed it like a Frankenstein monster.

At first, the invention seems useful or harmless. The 1910 woman (Cindy Cheung) offers a wooden finger to a boy injured in a workhouse accident. Otaku (Ryan Spann) around 1978 will show off a troublesome robot prototype that recognizes 400 English words. (A man who is pleased with nerds is impressed.) In 1987, a mother (Kristen Sea), a sad son (Julian Lindel), who can't sleep, agrees to see one of her soap. Masu. -DisconTINUED Technology, Betamax Video Tape.

Some of these scenes are beautifully drawn with the characteristic of sadness, the sorrow, and the bottom flow of Harrison's best work. (The opportunity and danger of AI as a human companion was subject to his 2015 Puritzer's finalist, “Marjorie Prime”.) The boy who got the prosthesis is no longer his family. I can't afford to buy, so I'm left in the workhouse. (Father to my son: “Oh, goodbye, Tom. I don't think I will meet you.”) The reason why the 1987 boy was sad was because his single uncle was buried that day. You don't have to tell what he did.

However, other scenes, such as when the last person in 2076 lived as a semi -robot overload dystopia discrimination, is needed as a step on the Harrison timeline, but it is not persuasive. It feels like a filler in the necessary place as a place. Others are barely disposable, and the dark board building sketches have earned points and turned black.

“Ancient” is not a cumulative in normal sense, as this time and personality is the nine wonderful actors playing 45 roles. Rather, as soon as we care about someone, someone disappears.

I mean a playwright, but of course, all humans are in the play, otherwise it will disappear in a more literal sense. This is both personal and geological scale, which helps emphasize the theme of mortality, and instructs you to consider the value of life more than living organisms. Perhaps the most terrifying line of the play has been spoken by writer (Amelia craftsman) by 2031. -On unable to compete with AI in the market

“If they can do everything to make me,” she asks, “What is my point?”

This character disappears after a while, but Harrison has not left anything to hold it together. The ideas and images recur, and are often repeated over a long stretch. Many scenes are linked to previous scenes, such as structural Easter eggs. Mary's husband -I meet Percy Sherry in the first scene of Campfire. Almost a century, we hear the voice of a woman who is struggling to read his “ODE Aude to the West Wind”. AI device, which is embedded in 2032, has been embedded by 2076 by 2076.

Therefore, logic has less stories than poetic, or in other words, it is software, not hardware. If it is a bold choice, it rewards about two -thirds of the road that passes through 95 minutes of the play. Once the timeline is clear, our guide will introduce special exhibits, unlike others.

This is a sacred place for human technology, which suggests how the future is wrong, as an old -fashioned scholar guesss a huge dinosaur from a small bone. For all their brains, they misunderstand part -shampoo as a clarinet as a soft drink and medical supplies, and misunderstand Betamax as a kind of treasure that requires refrigeration.

At such an exquisite moment, there is not only Harrison, but also Harrison, but also the characteristics of David Cromer who supervised Kaitin Sullivan and “ancient”. Everything is completely determined by the maximum effect that is not exaggerated. Matdo Metal Panel (Paul Steinberg Set), Museum Case Lighting (due to Tyler Mikoro), sociology pinpoint costume (due to Brenda Abbandandro), creepy sound (Christian bassy), especially prop )

It is very minimal and is always elegant, but all look like $ 1 million. This may be the reason for the play in three directions, along with the playwright, the New York Vineard Theater and the Chicago Goodman Theater.

However, what is not too much may be that “bone QU products” are not enough. The last three -thirds that I do not ruin are cleverly modified our views on the timeline, but are nervous to justify itself. As far as that, it is a traditional way, and the rest of the play has been very often Baded.

In the process, Harrison's play is a kind of Hub pride that inevitably leads to extinction, like global warming, and wants to survive, feel, mourn, mourning, and enjoy substances. It seems that they are equalizing natural needs. Did Betamax take responsibility? Was it Mary Sherry's vision? “Ancient” is not a monument than a moral pageant. It may not be wrong, but it's just half of the story.

Ancient times
Until February 23, at Manhattan Playlight Horizons. PlaywrightShorizo ​​ns.org. Execution time: 1 hour and 35 minutes.