History on Display in THE ANTIQUITIES & LIBERATION — Review

Two current off-Broadway plays openly use history, not only as a means of examining where things went wrong, but as a shaky base for our own contemporary knowledge.

The Antiquities, Jordan Harrison’s intelligent new play, is structured as a tour of a natural history museum dedicated to the “Late Human age,” with its curators presenting 12 exhibits exploring how our kind phased itself out. Beginning with Mary Shelley dreaming up a machine man for Frankenstein in 1816 and ending long after humanity has been bred out of the Earth (2240), it traces a compelling line from our first flirtations with artificial life to its eventually catastrophic takeover of the natural one. A very game and versatile cast of nine alternate as a type of living mannequins in these discrete scenes, neatly boxed into their dioramas (Paul Steinberg did the scenic design, which verges on haunting sheet-metal de Chirico; Tyler Micoleau the lighting) and ably directed to find poignancy in the uncanny by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan. Checking in on humans interacting with several forms of technology, from the immediately life-changing (medical prosthetics) to the seemingly frivolous (actors worried about losing gigs to AI performances), Harrison warms up the structure’s possible technological iciness (and its New Yorker-style wit) with a gently-deployed, more human observational thread: it wasn’t just the robots that killed us, but our gradual loss of empathy, displayed here through characters struggling to reckon with parenthood, queerness, differences in ambition or disease. When the tour reaches its final exhibit and begins to move backwards, it’s that eye for compassion that cuts deepest.

Compassion is foregrounded from the outset at Liberation, Bess Wohl’s semi-autobiographical latest, which mines a weekly women’s consciousness-raising meeting in 1970 suburban Ohio for answers as to why we’re still fighting the same battles. The Wohl stand-in (Susannah Flood) begins with a direct address to the audience: her mother’s recent death has caused her to wonder (a) how the advancements made by mid-century feminists could have so frustratingly been rolled back, and (b) how such an independent spirit – she organized those meetings and wrote for Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine – could have traded in a life of radical ideals to raise children within a traditional marriage. Flood spends a little less than half of the play in this mode, interviewing the still-living members of that group and grappling earnestly with her findings. But, for the most part, she (as the stand-in) steps into the role of her mother, Lizzie, who is wading through those same questions with similar awkwardness. Also at these meetings, which take place at a community center gym: Margie (Betsy Aidem), an older housewife with cutting wit; Susan (Adina Verson), a butch biker fallen on tough times; Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio), a Sicilian filmmaker and talkative firebrand; Dora (Audrey Corsa), a prim young woman who thought she was joining a knitting club; and Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), a big city editor and the group’s sole Black member. Director Whitney White wrangles the ensemble cast with her usual thrilling skill, coaxing deeply human and individual performances from each. David Zinn’s set and Qween Jean’s costumes are equally spot-on and specific. Wohl has fun with form and structure with a stimulating transparency, cycling through traditional in-universe scenes, fourth-wall-breaking speeches in the present day, and other Brechtian flourishes like the late addition of two performers, Kayla Davion and Charlie Thurston, to jolt the play alive as it slightly sputters toward the end of its first act. Questions of love and freedom, ethics and goals, history and foresight, and sisterhood and marriage are thoughtfully explored with great humor, and through a fantastic cast.

The Antiquities is in performance through March 2, 2025 at Playwrights Horizons on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

‍Liberation is in performance through March 30, 2025 at the Laura Pels Theatre on West 46th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.