Privacy

Review by Tulis McCall
19 July 2016

When the lights come up on Privacy at The Public Theater, nothing happens. And that is EXACTLY as it should be. Although the first scene includes Daniel Radcliffe (The Writer), whom most of us have witnessed growing up in front of us, no one claps. Because we are sophisticated, and we know that clapping for a celebrity is a big faux pas. Aren't we the smart ones!!!

Maybe not so much....

That question comes boomeranging back at us within the first 20 minutes of this play as Reg Rogers (playing the first of his many roles) commands the lights up on the audience so that The Writer can see us. If he see us perhaps his phobia about being out in the world will be addressed. The writer, you see, has just broken up with his beau, and in the process has not only written an emotional email "I don't know why I'm writing this...," he has hit SEND and neglected to undo that command. He is a wreck looking for a shore on which to beach himself.

The Writer decides to pull up stakes and move to New York. The ex-beau is there and there is a chance that the relationship can be saved - he thinks. In addition, what better place to recreate yourself than in crowded, noisy, impartial New York? The Writer is much like Alice, and New York becomes his personal Wonderland. More or less.

On this cosmic journey he is visited by a series of current social-affairs illuminaries: Sherry Turkle from MIT, Ujala Sehgal from New York Civil Liberties Union, Michal Kosinski from Stanford, Ewen Macaskill from The Guardian, James Bamford from PBS - there are around 40 of them swirling effortlessly in and out of The Writer's life. They are not there to help his broken heart. They are there to open his eyes to what is going on around him. And us.

We are gently coaxed into sharing this journey with The Writer, and we do. Lights come up and down. Phones are at the ready. We are like a schoolroom of first year college students who got the plum class with the cool professor.

Privacy could easily have been a lecture on the fact that there is no such thing anymore. That, however, while interesting, would not have reached in and touched us between the ears. James Graham and Josie Rourke have created what we used to call "A Happening". Unlike Dionysus 69 no one gets naked or is groped by a cast member. But we are nonetheless involved.

The twists and turns of this production - and the cast is superb in every way - catch us off guard and profoundly shift our perception of our relationships to all the electronics, not to mention the people attached to them, to which we are devoted. So devoted we lose sight of what we are doing: Parents with their children look at their phones while the children figure out how to amuse themselves. People with dogs forgo the pleasure of being with this animal they have adopted and choose to scroll through texts instead. Chriporactors have waiting lists of people who have stepped into potholes or crashed into walls while on their smart phones. And lets' not talk about the neck strain.

What does all of this devotion to an electronic device get us?

Pretty much nothing, except open. Open to anyone who has a mind to look. And they are looking. At where we travel; what we look at on the Internet; the state of our health; the success of our relationships. You could shout all this from the rooftops, of course. But then you would get lost in the babble. The way it is now, through your Smart Phone, you are being counted and assessed and evaluated without your having to lift one finger. A time saver indeed.

Edward Snowden may have been more whistle-blower than traitor.

(Tulis McCall)

"Grim tidings are spread with great cheer in 'Privacy,' James Graham and Josie Rourke's perky investigation into the consequences of living your life online... Viewed as a play, it is neither as profound as it aspires to be nor even entirely cohesive. But it ingeniously recreates that most venerable of entertainments, the magic show, in a form ideally suited to the second decade of the 21st century."
Ben Brantley for New York Times

"Whether it's cameras monitoring our every move, online gizmos constantly gathering data, everyone is always connected and sharing — whether they want to or not."
Joe Dziemianowicz for New York Daily News

"Privacy, a sardonic but disturbing survey of data mining and surveillance, makes clear that those miraculous toys in our back pockets may actually be playing us."
David Cote for Time Out New York

"As informational as it is entertaining, this scarily funny theatrical exercise will make you want to swear off the Internet forever."
Frank Scheck for Hollywood Reporter

"Over the course of this ever-surprising play, the Writer keeps learning how the Internet overrides what he thinks of as free will. He explores Google, LinkedIn, email, Twitter, Facebook and porn sites. He goes on dating sites. He gets hacked. He has his identity stolen. But in the end, he can't answer the big question: Who owns your life?"
Marilyn Stasio for Variety

External links to full reviews from popular press...

New York Times - New York Daily News - Time Out - Hollywood Reporter - Variety

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