Review Roundup: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS

The Public Theater just opened THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS, created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory in The Public's Martinson Theater. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS continues through Sunday, November 13. 

Following the success of The Last Cargo Cult, Mike Daisey turns his razor-sharp wit to America's most mysterious technology icon in this hilarious and harrowing tale of pride, beauty, lust, and industrial design. He illuminates how the CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while sharing stories of his own travels to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods. Daisey's dangerous journey shines a light on our love affair with our devices and the human cost of creating them.

For additional information, visit: The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Interim Executive Director Joey Parnes) will present the New York premiere of THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS, created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory in The Public's Martinson Theater. THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS will begin previews on Tuesday, October 11 and continue through Sunday, November 13 with an official press opening on Monday, October 17 at 8 p.m. Single tickets, priced at $75-$85, go on sale Tuesday, September 6. Member tickets are $40 and are on sale now. Following the success of The Last Cargo Cult, Mike Daisey turns his razor-sharp wit to America's most mysterious technology icon in this hilarious and harrowing tale of pride, beauty, lust, and industrial design. He illuminates how the CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while sharing stories of his own travels to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods. Daisey's dangerous journey shines a light on our love affair with our devices and the human cost of creating them. "Mike Daisey is brilliant, and this show is a masterpiece," said Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. "Combining Mike's slavish love for all things Apple with his acute inquisitorial mind, this astonishingly timely show is like a series of emergency news bulletins about the way we live now." THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS will feature scenery and lighting design by Seth Reiser. Mike Daisey (Creator and Performer) has been called "the master storyteller" and "one of the finest solo performers of his generation" by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues include last season's critically acclaimed The Last Cargo Cult, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the six-hour epic Great Men of Genius, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years. He has performed across five continents, ranging from Off-Broadway at The Public Theater to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to abandoned theaters in post-Communist Tajikistan. He's been a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman," as well as a commentator and contributor to WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR, and the BBC. His first film, Layover, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and a feature film of his monologue If You See Something Say Something is currently in post-production. His second book, Rough Magic, a collected anthology of his monologues, will be published in 2011. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and has been the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, four Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation's Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. His next monologue will be All the Hours in the Day, a 24-hour performance that charts the epic story of America's essential character as a weaving together of puritanism and anarchism, which will be performed at the Time Based Art Festival in Portland, and the Under the Radar Festival in New York. Jean-Michele Gregory (Director) works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Working primarily with solo artists, for the last decade she has collaborated with monologist Mike Daisey, directing at venues across the globe including The Public Theater, the Sydney Opera House, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Under the Radar Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the Barrow Street Theatre, Chicago's Museum for Contemporary Art, American Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Noorderzon Festival, Intiman Theatre, Performance Space 122, the TBA Festival, and many more. She has also directed New York storyteller Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and the Seattle-based performer and writer SuzAnne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Optimism). Her productions have received four Seattle Times Footlight Awards (21 Dog Years, The Ugly American, Monopoly!, The Last Cargo Cult), the Bay Area Critics Circle Award (Great Men of Genius), and nominations from the Drama League and Outer Critics Circle (If You See Something Say Something). The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Joey Parnes, Interim Executive Director) was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals and productions of classics at its downtown home and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Public Theater's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through extensive outreach programs. Each year, more than 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater's productions have won 42 Tony Awards, 158 Obies, 42 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. Fifty-four Public Theater Productions have moved to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; For Colored Girls...; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog" target="_blank">www.publictheater.org.

Charles Isherwood, NY Times: Mr. Daisey pushes the notes of quiet outrage and guiltmongering perhaps a little too hard in the show's culminating moments, although he avoids full diatribe mode. But he doesn't really need to bang the drum so hard; he has made his points clearly and powerfully already. Anyone who sees Mr. Daisey's show - and anyone with a cellphone and a moral center should - will find it hard to forget the repercussions that our casual purchases can have in the lives of men and women (and children) half a world away.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: It might not be the eulogy the former Apple CEO would have chosen, but Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is an eye-opener. Updated but not softened since the recent death of the "techno-libertarian hippie," this provocative monologue pulls no punches in confronting us with the dark side of Jobs' legacy and of our own mass addiction to gadgets.

Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal: The trouble with "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," as with all theatrical journalism, is that Mr. Daisey is in essence asking us to take his word for it. He hasn't brought back pictures or named names, and the artful anger with which he tells his tale inevitably makes it still more suspect. You don't have to be a puritan to prefer that facts be served straight up. Still, Mr. Daisey deserves much credit for telling his audience things it almost certainly doesn't want to hear, and for doing it with such attention-commanding flair.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press: The outpouring of admiration for Jobs after the visionary's death hasn't changed Daisey's tone. The Jobs that he summons is a passionate designer but also a ruthless businessman - a Darth Vadar with laser death vision but also a Willy Wonka. Jobs was a unique man, Daisey says, but a "brutal tyrant," 'the enemy of nostalgia" and "the master of the forced upgrade."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: Unquestionably, Daisey is an expert storyteller. Even though he sits behind a table the entire time, he seems to fill the entire stage. He can sound like a gospel preacher one minute, imitate the screech of a dot-matrix printer the next.

Joe Dziemianowicz, Daily News: In this piercingly provocative and stingingly funny piece at the Public, Daisey charts the profound and not- always-pretty impact that Jobs and Apple, the company he co-founded, have had on the world in both digital and human terms. The show weaves together two journeys.

Brendan Lemon, Financial Times: Much of the evening's droll humour derives from the story's contrast between Daisey, a roly-poly man who favours Hawaiian shirts, and his small, bespectacled Chinese translator, Kathy. Daisey stands outside the gates of Shenzhen's gargantuan factories and hears first-hand accounts from employees about the punishing working conditions for those who put together iPhones and iPads. That 12- and 13-year-olds work on these products is not news, but Daisey gives the information a human face.

Michael Sommers, New Jersey Newsroom: Daisey's vocal performance is similarly athletic in its Olympics-level prowess at throwing words and ideas around. Performing with total confidence, he scarcely glances at perhaps a dozen yellow pages of notes during this riveting two-hour talk-athon. Daisey's frequent collaborator, director Jean-Michele Gregory, again unerringly guides the storyteller's ever-modulating verbal and emotional rhythms.

 

 

 

 

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