Reviewed
by Jerry Kraft
"The
Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" is a remarkably fresh and original play about a
brilliant young woman, Jennifer Marcus, who is both agoraphobic and thoroughly
engaged with her world. The plot is wildly inventive, involving Jennifer's
creation of a flying robot simulacrum of herself, a search for her birth mother
in China, missile research for the Department of Defense, a pizza delivery boy
who wants to be an archeologist in Peru, an online relationship with a Mormon
genealogist who's into cyber-porn, and a Russian mentor who's frustrated
because he can only find Thai food in New Haven.
Led
by a marvelously invested performance by Kimber Lee as Jennifer, Rolin Jones' award-winning play avoids being
merely gimmicky and allows us to genuinely care about Jennifer's world of
containment and detachment. Jennifer's fear of leaving the house is touching
and painful, and with the creation of Jenny Chow, her flying robot
representative, the parallel between campy retro-tech and her own advanced
technological reality is funny and slightly sad. She teaches the robot
cheerleading and the intricacies of grammar, but when the "Jenny" finally
finds Jennifer's real mother, language remains as great a barrier as the
cultural and historical divide that must forever separate them. There's
convincing pain and need in Jennifer's dysfunctional family and social
relationships, her desire for an authentic history and identity, and in her
attempts to engineer a meaningful way to apply her genius in the world.
Tightly
and smartly directed by Carol Roscoe, a strong supporting cast balances the breakneck pace of
invention with a genuine desire to find meaning and purpose. The play admirably
explores authentic emotions adrift in a sometimes simulated reality, blends
technology with age-old human desires, attempts to find a mode of communication
between the real people and the often more manageable machines in our lives.
It's a remarkable and thoroughly entertaining piece of writing, marked with the
occasionally awkward dramaturgy of a young playwright, but filled with promise
and originality and intelligence.
Kimber
Lee easily delivers the contemporary vernacular (the "f" word is used
with the casual frequency of a comma), and also convinces us of her unforced
brilliance (she solves a rubik cube in about twenty seconds. "It's so
easy," she says) and her underlying fear and insecurity and emotional
undernourishment. Her relationship with her pizza-delivery friend Todd (an
endearing and effortless performance by Trick Danneker) feels natural and familiar. Her
father, warmly played by David Gassner, made him an average Joe, a decent guy who loves
his child, and avoided the doofus-Dad stereotype. Her mother, a far more
contentious and conflicted character, was played with strength and assertion by
Karen Nelson.
While the final scenes are a bit over-written and melodramatic, the performance
was nicely controlled. Kelly Mak gave the role of Jenny a twinkle of personality that
kept the humor in her robotic machinery, and also gave it a peculiar humanity
without ever being completely human. Patrick Scott got to energetically chew a
bunch of scenery as the Russian scientist Yakunin, and a Dr. Strangelove-esque
military contractor, as well as the Mormon genealogist who IM's Jennifer from a
Taco-Bell in Shanghai.
The
set, by Craig B. Wollam, doesn't really do much beyond providing practical spaces for the
actors to work, and the lighting by Tim Wratten is equally perfunctory. Emily
McLaughlin's
costumes are rather better, if undistinguished. The real technical standout was
Rob Whitmer's
sound design, which created more of the environment than did any of the
physical objects. Combining pure sound, oddly evocative bits of music and
atmospheric accents, it not only added to the dramatic action but created a
kind of surreal context which was as virtual as anything on the computers.
"The
Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" has won a number of playwriting awards,
and Rolin Jones is definitely a talent to watch. Seattle Public Theatre
achieved a real coup in getting this first production for Seattle. They've done
it proud, and this is an entertaining, provocative and well-accomplished
production.