The Antiquities – 31 January 2025

When looking back on world history and why people believed things less sophisticated than the current cultural norms, we often say, “it was a simpler time.” The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison posits looking at all of humanity as a simpler time from the perspective of a universe so far out into the future that it is looking at “The Late Human Era” as a museum exhibition, explaining how human beings lived and then created technology that eclipsed the human capacity to think, learn, and grow, eventually leading to the extinction of human beings. The play encourages us to look at humanity from a distance with humility. Whatever we have set in motion is already in motion; The Antiquities suggests that we are just a blip in time—one way of existing among many possibilities.

The most fascinating element of this show for me was where it started. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the first exhibit in the museum, suggesting that her novella about a man designing and giving life to a creature made of the strongest parts of other creatures that eventually surpassed his intelligence and his physical strength was the first piece of the puzzle that led to humans wanting to create entities that are more powerful than ourselves. Essentially, the idea of Victor Frankenstein’s Daemon is the first spark toward technological advancement. Most fascinatingly, Mary Shelley’s story was born out of a miscarriage and the desire for a baby that could live and be strong; as portrayed in The Antiquities, she wanted a baby and created a monster.

The next scene showed the invention of the sewing machine. Even this early in our journey, humans were warned that creating machines could come with high costs and consequences—in this case, missing fingers. Most of the successive exhibits showed a balance where each successive creation gave humanity something, and took something away. There were scenes interspersed reminding us of our humanity, primarily through our ability to love and to grieve. As time went on, the connections between the characters became increasingly surface level. We saw the invention of Artificial Intelligence (AI) come into play as developers listened to voice samples and talked about how they wanted talking to it to feel, we saw a kid beginning to use it to mess with his father—the innocent stage of where we’re at right now where some technology is helpful, but has features that can be harmful (or just a nuisance). We then saw a future where inorganic beings hunted humans to the point of shoving the last remaining living people into a designated zone where they regressed technologically and died out.

Throughout the show, the audience is spoken to as though we are these futuristic beings that are not bound by bodies and exist in the universe eternally. We are encouraged to take an honest look at ourselves and the way we handle things from a distance. After being shown a tidbit of each moment of human development, we get a second chance to see each scene’s conclusion in reverse order, bringing us back to Mary Shelley’s nightmarish contest win story of Frankenstein. Frankenstein is a story I’ve read many times, and enjoyed spinoffs from Young Frankenstein to Poor Things. One thing that is frequently misunderstood about this story by those who have not read it for themselves, is that it is the human creator who is depicted as monstrous. It is not the fault of the creation, which has superior mental and physical capacity, that the weaker creator rejects him, becomes afraid, and denies him love.  Victor Frankenstein is often depicted as a father in the eyes of his creation, whose unraveling begins when he realizes that a father is supposed to love him.

This concept was present in the early creations—the boy abandoned to the factory by a cruel father who thought he was just one too many. The lesbian student, Sam, whose disapproving mother was never let in on the rich beauty of her daughter’s life. In the end, it’s an inorganic child that stamps out a brave human on her way to save her friends. The last scene of humanity, back to churning butter all day and speaking of procreation depicts cynicism towards the concept of love having any kind of emotional component. It resembles what we might call, “a simpler time.” I’m not sure Harrison’s theory is really that technology will outpace and kill humanity (though that’s probably true too). Rather, it is the interaction between humanity and technology that leads to the loss of love. When love dies out, there’s nothing separating man from machine. When we stop knowing how to love one another is when we will die.

As for the production at Playwrights Horizons, every element was beautiful and fully supported the mission of this work. Design work was absolutely flawless, actors were incredible chameleons as they stepped in and out of clothing while he audience was traveling through time, and David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan did incredible work with direction. The journey transcends time and space in ways that are deeply philosophical, but can also be enjoyed on a more superficial level as a series of stories about love, loss, and creation—kind of like going to a museum and enjoying the experience but ignoring the plaques. The show is absolutely fascinating with more data points than I can analyze. Here’s the start of a journey I am grateful for: the art of theatre is outpacing my ability to critique it.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Blake Zidell & Associates.