DATA
by Matthew Libby
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
Lucille Lortel Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
There’s not much I can say about playwright Matthew Libby’s Data without violating my personal code about being very conservative about spoilers. Which in this case is especially relevant because Data is a small, tight software industry thriller in which the McGuffin is, after a fashion, a personal code.
That code is actually an algorithm capable of a particular kind of analysis. It’s not merely of the dangerous-in-the-wrong-hands variety. It’s also of the dangerous-in-our-hands variety. Basically there are no right hands.
It’s the work of Maneesh (Karan Brar), second generation Indian-American, fresh out of college and working at the software developer firm Athena, keeping his head down in the User Experience department, working alongside his lots-less-smart jock-bro friend Jonah (Brandon Flynn), playing table tennis during break time. The algorithm is Maneesh’s secret. Pretty much. And he’d like to keep it that way.
But the really cool stuff—the stuff that, ironically, Maneesh is best suited for, that he wants no part of, is in the department down the hall, Analytics. Which employs a highly conflicted former college friend of his, Riley (Sophia Ellis), and is run by coolly persuasive Alex (Justin H. Min); born in Singapore but fully assimilated in the language of his parent-adopted country and the culture of corporate maneuvering. Skilled at recruiting assets.
And that’s where I stop.
I can quibble a bit about the dialogue; the three younger characters are sometimes overly and unnecessarily “youthy” in the way they stumble and catch at colloquialism, as if their youth wasn’t the first, most obvious thing about them, but beyond that, it’s fairly tight and economical, moving the story along at a fair clip—and all four actors are engagingly in the should-I-be-paranoid? thriller groove. Tyne Rafaeli’s direction is likewise taut and crisp…but she also lays in too heavily on a lily-gilding device, this related to transitions between scenes. The stage goes black (as reasonably mandated in the script) but then flashing lights trace the perimeter of the proscenium, accompanied by a noisy, percussive backbeat, as if to keep saying Look! Look how suspenseful we’re being! You’d think a tale of quietly building tension could do with something subtler.
But quibbles aside, Data is effectively low-key, perhaps a bit more prescient than its author fully intended when he first drafted it, and has the verisimilitude of insider authenticity. Not a bad way to spend 80 minutes.