With so much upheaval in the world, The Antiquities, a play about the potential end of life as we know it, seems very timely. Nothing is forever of course, but lately “forever” feels like it has an endpoint. Whether it’s the power we’ve created to mutually self-destruct or the imminent dominance of AI or our stubborn abuse of Mother Earth, everywhere you turn, there are threats to our very existence. Playwright Jordan Harrison (best known for his play Marjorie Prime, a Pulitzer Prize finalist) has crafted a highly provocative and clever examination of humanity, tracing events both momentous and trivial that, together, spell out just how we’ve set the stage for our own demise.
The fuller version of the play’s title is A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities. It begins well in the future when humans are presumably obsolete and “visitors” to the museum are inorganic entities. They’re told to imagine things like having bodies and feelings and time. They also explain that much of the “Late Human Age” is lost and thus the museum was created with objects and fragments from the past, much like the present day museums, in an effort to provide a sense of a vanished era.
For the next 100 intermissionless minutes, the play is divided into exhibits spanning 424 years from the past to the future in which the museum attempts to recreate periods from human history.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
It starts in 1816 with a scene involving Mary Shelley and friends gathered at a nighttime picnic telling ghost stories. This is when Shelley came up with the idea to write about a man named Dr. Frankenstein who was determined to create life from human corpses. The “monster” he creates becomes the metaphor for the entire play.
The 1910 exhibit features impoverished factory workers. Nothing much happens except one of the workers has lost a finger in a workplace accident. Perhaps it’s an attempt to show that humans were at the mercy of “monster” machines.
Next is 1978, a very significant period in which we see a man seated at a bar exclaiming “Life! I made a life!” He’s just invented the first microprocessor in the form of a robot which has the ability to “learn” on its own.
From that point on, technology takes off in leaps and bounds. The brief 1994 exhibit depicts an excited family marveling at a giant computer monitor slowly lumbering to life with electronic beeps and mechanical noises. Their wondrous awe is staged for comic relief.
By the time we get to 2031, Hollywood actors are starting to be replaced by CGI figures and they are resorting to surgical methods to make themselves appear more human – bigger noses, scars and all.
The exhibits after that are harrowing as we discover that humans are a dying species. They all have implanted chips or nodes in their brains and by the year 2240 they are being hunted into extinction.
The play then reverses course and revisits each of the exhibits with new bits of information.
When we get back to the 1816 exhibit, Mary Shelley is describing her Frankenstein story in more detail except that the museum version has Mary say “Victor (Frankenstein) called the new life a monster because he was scared of it but its real name was Computer.” And after killing everyone, the monster/computer says “The time of humans is over, but you needn’t be sad for I am what follows you.”
Quite a bit of revisionist history there but isn’t that precisely what’s happening in our world today?
The Antiquities is a most perceptive and hauntingly cautionary tale, and it owes much to the production values crafted by the entire creative team. Each of the exhibits, expertly staged by co-directors David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan, captures just the right sense of otherworldliness, very much like a “Twilight Zone” episode. And it’s all greatly enhanced by Tyler Micoleau’s muted lighting and Paul Steinberg’s minimalist settings.
Bravo as well to the entire ensemble of nine very skilled actors taking on multiple roles. In their own way, they manage to bring each of their characters to vibrant life, no matter how small the parts.
The Antiquities is loaded with intriguing notions of life and death and the role that technology plays in our existence, both good and bad. It felt preachy at times but there’s no denying it’s as engaging as it is disturbing. Watching Antiquities, I kept thinking of Our Town as the futuristic characters described the inefficient humans wasting so much time in their brief lives. To be human is all about the imperfections and the time “wasted” on failure and error. Maybe we are a transitional species but if extinction is our destiny, the play warns, unlike the dinosaurs, we will have brought it on ourselves.
The Antiquities opened February 4, 2025, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through March 2. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
