By William Wolf

PRIVACY  Send This Review to a Friend

If you think when you use your cell or iPhone you are enjoying privacy, you are delusional. If you doubt that, the frighteningly entertaining and ingenious tech play “Privacy” proves the point. The presentation by the Public Theater and London’s Donmar Warehouse, where the work originated, is a dazzling array of internet dynamics and production know-how created by James Graham and Josie Rourke, with Graham as writer and Rourke as director.

Fueling the show is audience participation, with attendees encouraged to leave their phones on and at various points send messages and selfies. At the performance I attended a large percentage of the audience enthusiastically got into the spirit of the request and participated.

It helps considerably that Daniel Radcliffe leads the cast, playing a befuddled Brit known as The Writer, who visits a psychiatrist (Reg Rogers) after a breakup and reveals his frustrating inability to communicate effectively in personal relationships. People in his life, enacted by versatile cast members, turn up. Soon The Writer is off to New York. The character and his problem become the linchpin on which the exploration of communication through cells. iPhones and computers is explored.

Radcliffe’s effectiveness as an actor keeps the plot and events spinning amusingly. The show’s technical prowess provides glittering support of projection design (Duncan McLean), lighting design (Richard Howell), sound design (Lindsay Jones) and scenic design (Lucy Osborne). Research and digital associate Harry Davies has made a significant contribution, and real-life notables are portrayed at various points. Cast members include Rachel Dratch, Michael Countryman, Raffi Barsoumian and De’Adre Aziza, all talented in adding to the mosaic of secrecy and assault on privacy. The theme is amusingly complemented in the Playbill, with sections of bios and other information, including a huge research bibliography, blacked out.

At the curtain call, Radcliffe directly urges the audience not to talk about what occurs so as not to spoil the experience of others. I’d like to fudge on this with only one instance necessary to dramatize the far-reaching privacy invasions depicted by all of the goings-on involving audience participation. Phone calls enable the detection of exactly where a caller was when using a cell. Enough said. You will have to discover all of the rest of the shenanigans, data revelations and audience participation gambits for yourself.

My one criticism of the show is its being overlong, with the creators not knowing when they have accomplished enough. Parts seem over-extended, especially in the events-crammed second act. But overall, “Privacy” is delightfully original as a show loaded with technology and up to the minute in recognition of the whole new world of contemporary communication into which a a new generation is tapping. The show skillfully makes the point of how scary loss of privacy can be. At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street. Phone: 212-967-7555. Reveiewd July 23, 2016.

  

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