Jordan Harrison’s ‘The Antiquities’ is a thought-provoking science fiction play that explores the intersection of human history and technological advancement. The play takes the form of a museum tour, where bodiless entities survey half a millennium of human invention, from fire pits to smartglasses.
The human race is presented like a museum exhibit—a grimly compelling concept, but one that makes for a A Glitchy Play.
Science fiction assumes many forms, but it generally has to feature some jump in evolution or gear. Novelty in tech or nature is key. Funny that the genre itself has mutated very little in the past century. You say the machines we build will try to replace us? Humanity will perish but our metal babies will preserve our legacy?
A Museum Tour Through Time
Jordan Harrison‘s ‘The Antiquities‘ is a museum tour/reenactment by bodiless entities surveying half a millennium of human invention. This imaginative yet inert treatise moves, regrettably, like a glitchy CD player stuttering over the same track.
Jordan Harrison is an American playwright and screenwriter.
Born in 1969, Harrison's work often explores the complexities of human relationships and identity.
He has written numerous plays, including 'Am I Still Your Bird?' and 'Or, at Least It Wasn't Routine', which premiered Off-Broadway in 2014.
Harrison's writing style is known for its wit, nuance, and emotional depth.
His work has been widely performed across the United States and internationally.
Harrison‘s string of vignettes is one long object lesson stretching from 1816 Europe to distant dystopia. It’s a literal object lesson: a series of historic items—ranging from fire pits to telephones, computers and smartglasses—are now the fetishized, curated relics of a suprahuman artificial intelligence.
A World Already Mapped
The retrospective begins at night by Lake Geneva, as Mary Shelley (Kristen Sieh) and the very pregnant Claire Clairmont (Amelia Workman) lounge about with Percy Shelley (Aria Shahghasemi) and Lord Byron (Marchánt Davis), the latter Clair’s lover and father of her baby. Warmed by a fire pit, the young literati—along with Byron‘s jaded doctor (Andrew Garman)—amuse themselves telling ghost stories.
Mary Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer.
Born on August 30, 1797, in London, England, she is best known for writing the classic novel 'Frankenstein.'
Published in 1818, it tells the story of a young scientist who creates a monster from dead body parts and brings it to life through electricity.
Shelley's work has had a significant impact on literature and popular culture, influencing numerous adaptations and interpretations of her iconic characters.
Already Harrison has distributed themes that run through the narrative: natural fecundity (babies) versus life-ish artifice—Frankenstein reanimating dead flesh; eventually, machines that think. The action flashes to 1910, where a boy (Julius Rinzel) is delivered by his poverty-stricken father into the care of two female factory workers, soon to face the inevitable mangling of his body parts in industrial gears.
A World Already Lost
Each period ‘exhibit’ is announced by the year flashed by LED light at the top of the proscenium: 1978, 1994, 2000, 2014 and beyond. We see the early days of robotics, home computers, the internet, cell phones, and Alexa-like digital assistants, woven through the lives of various characters we meet briefly, often at inflection points experiencing grief or dread.
Robots have a rich history dating back to ancient civilizations.
The term 'Karel Čapek' coined in the 1920 play R.U.R., meaning 'forced labor'.
Early robots were simple machines, such as automatons and clockwork devices.
In the 20th century, robots became more sophisticated with the introduction of electronic and computer-controlled systems.
Today, robots are used in various industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, and space exploration.
Harrison‘s steady advance toward tomorrow is certainly effective at ratcheting up tension. It’s hard to ignore the tightening in your stomach as we bid adieu to 2023 and face a world already mapped by James Cameron. As a thought experiment, snapshotting the next 200+ years of human history as the rise of machines and the fall of civilization into neomedieval sparsity, Harrison‘s apocalypse is ±±.
A Concept That Fails to Deliver
However, when Harrison pauses the pageant and rewinds scene by scene, you begin to suspect there’s little more here than alt-historical cautionary tale. The playwright has shown human progress as a parable of folks creating toys that eventually supplant them. Does reversing the chronology shed further light? Not that I could see, it merely brings us back to where we began, on the beach with Mary Shelley, then our ethereal tour guides, then blackout.
Armageddon pre-programmed. I kept trying to find a clue in the forwards-backwards motion. Was there a genealogical link from Clair’s baby in 1816 to those who followed, people who innovated robotics and AI? Or was this an elaborate writing exercise with spiffy dialogue, high-minded concerns, but little dramatic heft?
A World-Building Contradiction
What’s more, there’s an inherent contradiction in Harrison‘s world-building. If the shadowy beings in charge of this museum can recreate past eras with relative verisimilitude, why do they not grasp the function of a teddy bear or a cast for a broken arm, when these elements are realistically incorporated into skits?
A Missed Opportunity
It’s a pity: ‘The Antiquities‘ is a compelling concept and Harrison has a poetic, philosophical bent, but the execution lacks a certain audacity. One wonders what Caryl Churchill would have made of the premise (as with ‘Love and Information‘, she’s master of the short, sharp shock). Not even a tightly directed cast and boldly designed production can overcome the sense that we’ve seen these tropes before on screens.
The Antiquities | 1hr 40mins. No intermission. | Playwrights Horizons | 416 West 42nd Street | 212-279-4200 | Buy Tickets Here.
