With Data, Michael Libby has written an unquestionably significant play wrenched not only from today’s headlines but possibly also ripped from headlines heading our way in the frightfully near future. Furthermore, he’s unleashed a work that fits into a category that may be entirely new or at least still thin: The Intellectual Horror Drama.
If that’s not enough incentive to send any committed theatergoer on a box-office run — especially anyone hung up on the whereabouts and wherewithal of AI — the Data story ought to do it. What needs to be recognized now, though, is that the constantly intriguing episodes are too intricately suspenseful to be detailed in a conscientious review.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Let’s just report that protagonist Maneesh (Karan Brar), is the author and owner of an algorithm that accurately predicts how newly signed baseball players will perform during their major league careers. Newly graduated, he has taken a position at a firm called Athena Technologies, where the crucial department deals with data analytics.
For reasons he keeps to himself, and though clearly qualified for that top echelon, he’s chosen to keep his vaunted predictive algorithm to himself. He prefers remaining in the lesser UX room, where preparations for the analytics crew are the days’ orders. The big plus for him appears to be spending downtime with Jonah (Brandon Flynn), that department’s head, playing ping-pong. Jonah, by the way, would like to move to Data Analytics but is woefully aware he’s not at that level.
Things begin to heat up when, only a few months into his stay, Maneesh runs into Riley (Sophia Lillis), a school acquaintance, who knows about the baseball big deal and can’t understand why he, as he admits, hasn’t even applied for the department where she’s already toiling and where she suspects he’d be a meaningful addition.
So convinced of his merits, Riley tells Alex (Justin H. Min), her department head, about Maneesh and, more to the point, about his predictive baseball algorithms. Instantly Alex senses that not only should Maneesh be brought into Data Analytics but that his predictive understanding is just the analytic that could be adapted for the highly classified project Athena is developing. After some hefty manipulation, Alex convinces Maneesh to join the analytics group.
And there you have the accelerating Data suspense, suspense about which not much more can be divulged. That’s because the project Athena has undertaken in large measure to be the company’s predictive analytics leader is highly controversial. It’s so incendiary that when Riley discloses her resistance to it and implores Maneesh to join her in a plan to leak their misgivings, he … well, will he or won’t he?
So, what is the mind-blowing Athena undertaking? Sorry, but that’s the spoiler that won’t be declared here. Perhaps, though, it’s fair to allow that it involves a political issue volleyed every day. Perhaps it’s also fair to say it evokes things like ICE, national border crossings, and Minneapolis in these tense times.
As Libby masterfully unravels his dire warning, he keeps his sights on Maneesh, a name that, intended or not, conjures “man-ish.” The playwright follows his (perhaps) hero as — unsure at the start of who or what he is — he finds himself in a situation where he’s obliged to take consequential action, action being a resonant description.
Indeed, Libby must be thinking about another fictional figure who knows he must act but consistently wavers: Hamlet. Maneesh is a Hamlet-like protagonist, even to the extent that the ping-pong playing here could be a metaphor for fencing. Right up to the last time he’s seen, Maneesh is ping-pong fencing, as here and throughout actor Brar plays the character to the hilt (pun intended).
The same acting chops are on view from the other three. Lillis as a young women torn apart by the bind in which she finds herself strikingly conveys Riley’s mounting desperation. As Jonah, an ambitious man on to his own drawbacks, Flynn disintegrates keenly, particularly in a nail-biting sequence where he thinks he has the possibility to advance at work by betraying coworker Maneesh. As Alex, Min is equally sleek and calculating in that scene and in all his scenes.
What must be noted is that Data is impressive in every aspect. Marsha Ginsberg’s high-ceilinged room with its three doors changes from scene to scene by the addition of only a table or a set of viewing-room seats or a desk or that ping-pong fold-up. Amith Chandrashaker lights the frantic goings-on to emphasize the increasingly off-kilter moods. Sound and music designer Daniel Kluger has written accompanying transitions that heighten the mounting anxiety with which the contemporary tragedy wickedly dallies.
Overseeing it all is director Tyne Rafaeli, and she’s careful that Libby with all his insights into today’s troubled world is completely served. If there’s one oddity, it’s much of the ping-pong playing. Because so much pinging and ponging occurs while exposition is spoken, the games are never the least bit competitive, just click-click-click-click-click-click. Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme wouldn’t understand it nohow.
Data opened January 25, 2026, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through March 29. Tickets and information: datatheplay.com
