Review: THE ANTIQUITIES at Goodman Theatre

Jordan Harrison’s new play THE ANTIQUITIES asks the question, “What does it mean to be human?” It opens with two museum curators inviting the audience to tour a museum displaying relics from the late human era...with the implication that said place exists in a post-human one. This is the first play I’ve seen that specifically tackles A.I. and technology...and the potential ramifications of letting that go unchecked. 

The play runs through a series of exhibits showcasing human behavior past, present, and future. The ensemble of nine actors (Marchánt Davis, Layan Elwazani, Andrew Garman, Helen Joo Lee, Thomas Murphy Molony, Aria Shahghasemi, Kristen Sieh, Ryan Spahn, and Amelia Workman) play 47 roles, popping up as different characters in the play’s timeline. While some of the selections at first seem random, as might happen in a real museum when curators must construct exhibits without full context, they form a collection of vignettes demonstrating human innovation and the desire for progress. Altogether these scenes don’t inherently imply that all technology or A.I. is bad, but rather that said technology doesn’t purely exist in a vacuum. A scene in 1994 has 3 characters gawking at the arrival of dial-up internet and how it provides a glimpse into the future, while scenes in the early 2030s provide an eerie, quirky interpretation of AI’s potential ramifications for our near-term future as a writer contemplates how she’ll potentially need an A.I.-enhanced device implanted into her brain to keep her job.

Harrison’s exploration of A.I.’s ramifications were enough to make my head spin, but the forecasting ranged in impact. The near-future scenes are simultaneously playful and creepy with a specific sense of time and place (though I don’t anticipate in six years that actors like the one Sieh plays in the scene will yet have plastic surgery to appear “more human” — we’re definitely still in our homogenized beauty standards era.) The specificity and oddness of Harrison’s ideas, though, are tangible. 

Scenes that venture further out into the future are less definitive and largely resemble the popular YA dystopian novels of the past 10-15 years or so. In Harrison’s portrayal of a dystopian future, the scenes become more conventional and less insightful. But that might be precisely because readers are drawn to those novels because they share a common belief in human survival — and that unfailing belief runs ironically through the play, too. Motifs throughout represent the human belief in our own invincibility, yet also imply that our fallibility is what makes us human.

Ultimately, the crux of THE ANTIQUITIES implies that, when it comes to technology and innovation, humans need to ask ourselves not just “Why not?” but also “Why?” While the play literally looks back at the human era, the vignettes Harrison presents caution us to analyze and reflect on our choices in the moment, before those innovations get away from us. 

In keeping with the museum concept, the characters are listed in the play as “Woman 1, Woman 2” etc (or in the case of Molony, a game and talented young actor, who I previously enjoyed immensely in HIGHWAY PATROL, as “Boy 1.”) This device not only allows Harrison to have his actors play many roles, but also underscores the museum concept. In putting together remnants of the past, some context and color is inherently lost. As co-directed by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan, THE ANTIQUITIES has an ensemble who give deeply human performances, portraying the carousel of characters striving towards progress. 

While the first go-round on that museum carousel of scenes is quick, Harrison elegantly swings them back around so that when earlier timelines are revisited, audiences can see how far we’ve come (and contemplate whether or not that’s too far). I found myself a little restless at the halfway mark because I wasn’t sure how it would come together, but there’s a poetry to that roughly symmetrical structure. While the implication of technology running away from us — and eroding human existence — isn’t new, Harrison is asking it at a pivotal time. And in a way, there’s something really bold about writing a play about a human museum that will soon become a relic itself. The predictions and forward-thinking in THE ANTIQUITIES may soon date it, but the question of balancing human progress with innate humanity and room for abstraction and problem solving will remain. 

Chicago Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. HAIRSPRAY (Uptown Music Theater of Highland Park)

7.3% of votes

2. RENT (Highland Park Players)

7.3% of votes

3. THE WIZARD OF OZ (Up and Coming Theatre/Elgin Summer Theater)

6.6% of votes

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