For some time now we theatergoers have become accustomed to the absence of opening and closing curtains. We take a seat and are confronted with the set. If we arrive early, we get to look at it for many prolonged minutes—as well as listen to any accompanying sounds the director and sound designer have considered appropriate for getting audiences in the mood.
This occurs at Andrew Stein’s Disruption, as directed by Hersh Ellis and now arrived from its 2023 London debut. In you walk in, sit and get to look through Zoë Hurwitz’s set at the other half of the audience, you realize you’re seeing a set that appears to be a room with not much more than a medium-size table in it. Also, you’re seeing that the space is framed by an encompassing rectangular neon tube with rounded corners.
A funny thing happened to me when I took all this in, while aware of the other audience half facing me. I had the sensation that I was looking at a large aquarium, the sort of aquarium restaurants sometimes position as a space divider. More that, the sounds that designer Caroline Eng was supplying—low and repetitive organ-like chords causing mounting mystery—suggested the electrical hum of an aquarium water refresher.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
And if it was an aquarium I was observing, I further figured that the actors on entering could be regarded as species of tropical fish. But what, more to the dramaturgical point, would be the species of these tropical fish and could they be assessed in this instance as topical fish?
I admit I’m reporting the kind of silliness to which a critic waiting for action to start succumbs, but as Disruption began, I was struck with it as well as stuck with it.
Stein’s drama gets underway as three couples are introduced—Suzie (Shaunette Renée Wilson) and Ben (Conrad Ricamora), Mia (Irene Sofia Lucio) and Barry (Jason Ralph), Jill (Elizabeth Stanley) and Paul (Joe Tippett). As I was still in my aquarium trance, I immediately took each couple as kissing gouramis.
Okay, it’s time for me to thank all you readers for your indulgence so far and merely explain that I could pretty much guess that from then on each couple will face challenges to their kissy-face-y marriages and that while they’re experiencing that, we audience members would be obliged to tag along.
Tagging along means meeting soon the three couples’ old friend Nick (John David Washinton) and his business partner Raven (Emma Kikue). Their business? Marketing an algorithm company that they insist will ease life for the globe’s population billions. The catch: To get up and running, the financing will have to be provided by their friends. (In line with the tropical fish metaphor, Nick and Raven could be categorized as fin-nipping tiger barbs.)
So, hotcha! Stein has settled on a subject and theme that couldn’t be more current. With the promise of algorithm elaboration (and AI, of course), Nick insists that “[what] we’re doing, will fundamentally change the way we live our lives. That’s our thesis.” He wants his old crowd to pitch in with him while foregoing otherwise pressing individual decisions, such as buying a new house, having children, merely surviving a dying occupation. The suspense: Will they, or won’t they?
Throughout Disruption, the talk of algorithms defies disruption. It persists, implying that Stein will, as one phrase has it, “curate coincidence,” whatever that means in the context of the huge algorithms topic. Even video designer Yana Biryükova pours algorithm prompt on upstage screens and regularly on the set’s floor—“a year later” is kinda one of them.
But does something persuasive result from all the highbrow cogitating? Not necessarily. Though the crises these sophisticated New York couples face are not precisely predictable, they’re not eventually unpredictable, either.
Also, while Stein sounds impressively knowledgeable about algorithms—he surely has this code-ignorant observer flummoxed—he doesn’t seem to reach any significant conclusions about the march of technology. Maybe he’s decided there are no conclusions to be drawn, so he doesn’t. In which case he needs to be more specific about that.
What he can boast is director Ellis guiding a top-drawer cast through the script. Every one of them gives the kind of performance as characters confronting middle-age tests that leads to ensemble awards. Every way Ellis places them on the stage is clean and meaningful—with special thanks to lighting designer Reza Behjat’s skillful work.
Leaving the theater, this patron was no longer thinking about fish but about the belief that the aim of technology over several decades has been to make life simpler. Not seemingly intentionally, Stein builds a case here that it dramatically hasn’t. Quite the opposite.
Disruption opened August 2, 2026, at Signature Center and runs through September 27. Tickets and information: disruptionplay.com
