Theatre in Review: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (The Public Theater)

	Mike Daisey. Photo: Kevin Berne.

The Public Theater's uncanny ability to find new works that speak to this exact moment continues with The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Rumor had it that, after Jobs' death two weeks ago, some argued that Mike Daisey's solo piece might best be postponed in the name of propriety. Daisey himself took to the New York Times op-ed page to defend the decision to go ahead with the production. He made the right decision; by no means a personal hatchet job, it is a trenchant analysis of the way in which Jobs' inventions have succeeded, to the point that they constitute the window through which we view reality. "We speak of the operating system as a religion tonight," says Daisey, who spends the next two hours throwing cold water on its cherished dogmas.

Daisey has sometimes been compared to Spalding Gray, because he's a monologist, he sits at a desk, and he works from notes. But that description doesn't begin to capture his take-no-prisoners wit, deadly accurate comic timing (including some murderously funny pauses), and that voice, which ranges from piercing squeals of sarcasm and rage to an intimate whisper. (I guarantee you won't forget his imitation of the sound of a dot matrix printer; it sounds like the banshee wail of a doomed soul.) The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is a two-track affair, which makes use of all these talents. The first track is a brief history of Jobs' astonishing career -- confirming his status as the Henry Ford of our time -- and a brutally amusing look at those who -- like Daisey, before he became an apostate -- worship technology like a god.

"I didn't know I needed a laptop so thin I could slice a sandwich with it," he says, summoning up Apple's remarkable ability to create consumer needs where none existed. (Daisey swears his geekdom is so virulent that he occasionally breaks his Mac Pro down into its component parts and cleans it with an air brush. "It soothes me," he says.) He marvels at Apple's ability to terminate popular products and force their unloved successors on the public. (His takedown of the tedium generated by PowerPoint presentations is one for the ages.) He's especially acute on how Apple products dictate to their users -- not the other way around --creating hermetically sealed worlds in which other companies' applications need not apply. And he provides a fascinating look at Jobs' transition from "a techno-libertarian hippie" to the insanely controlling manager of his later years. (Jobs wasn't a micro-manager, Daisey says; he was "a nano-manager.") In one of the piece's funniest passages, he recounts how, after Jobs' ignominious removal from his own company, Apple put out a parade of dud products, including a laptop that, from time to time, burst into flames; it climaxes in Daisey's riotous portrayal of a chastened Apple administration, desperately trying to woo its cast-off genius back into the fold.

As amusing as all this is, it's pretty much the stuff of stand-up comedy -- of an especially intelligent nature, to be sure -- but, as always, Daisey has more on his mind. The darker, sadder half of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs tracks his trip to Shenzhen, the Chinese boomtown, which has grown from a tiny fishing village to a metropolis of 14 million in less than a generation. It is here that he gets inside the notorious Foxconn, a secretive contract manufacturer for many American corporations, where workers are subjected to shifts of 12 hours or more, and the effect of performing the same actions hundreds of times each day leaves many of them with hands so gnarled as to be utterly useless. (When this happens, they get fired.) In one especially sobering moment, he cites the case of a worker who dropped dead after a 34-hour shift. When not working under inhumane conditions -- Foxconn employs 430,000 workers, he notes, in one of many astonishing statistics -- they are warehoused in dormitories where 13 to a tiny room is the norm. "These people are serfs," he concludes, adding that U.S. corporations, for all the lip service paid to unfettered capitalism, have colluded with China's communist government to exploit their citizens.

And so it goes, rage-fueled laughter alternating with chilling realities, a strategy designed to make us see that the real cost of our shiny new technology toys is paid by others, and the price is terrible indeed. At the same time, Daisey isn't merely interested in making us feel bad; the later passages of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs hold out hope for a changed world -- and, as you exit the theatre, an usher hands you a piece of paper listing simple, concrete actions that you can take.

As always, Daisey is working under the direction of Jean-Michele Gregory, who, I have to assume, has presided over his transition from the slightly awkward stage presence I first encountered eight years ago to the thoroughly assured raconteur he is today. This is also the first Daisey piece I've seen with a real design -- scenery and lighting by Seth Reiser -- and it makes a difference. Reiser provides different versions of white light for each of the script's tracks, and he also comes up with certain effects -- lighting the underside of the stage deck and using red backwashes to give the piece a slightly surreal effect. The stage is also backed by a grid of LED lights, another component that allows Daisey to comment on our unequal relationship with China and its workers. (No sound designer is credited, but I have a few sharp words for whoever created the annoyingly loud set list of preset music.)

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is also a refreshing corrective to the avalanche of hagiography created by the mass media in the wake of Jobs' death. (As I learned recently at my local newsstand, several major publications have put out dedicated issues about Jobs' life, all of them dripping with sentimentality.) In any event, Daisey isn't interested in attacking Jobs' character; he is vitally interested in the effects of Jobs' legacy, however, and its effect on all of us. The true subject is our complicity with consumer technology and its effect on those who provide it for us; if you leave the theatre thinking of questioning anyone, it's most likely going to be yourself.--David Barbour