“Data” speaks to the precise moment in which we are living to an astonishing degree, and not just because of our concerns about AI. It begins and ends with characters playing ping pong! It features immigrants at the mercy of the Department of Homeland Security! The amorality on display mirrors arguments that Trump is using to take over Greenland. Some of this was deliberate: Playwright Matthew Libby has set his story in “the mid-2020s” adding that “it might already have happened” – a possibility that helps make “Data” both riveting and dispiriting

The play begins with Maneesh (Karan Brar) playing ping pong with Jonah (Brandon Flynn) in the rec room of Athena Technologies, where they both have jobs in “UX” (user experience.) Maneesh, a recent graduate, has just joined the company;  Jonah is his official mentor, although his duties seem to comprise solely of playing ping pong with him and trying to get him to attend Taco Tuesday, since even Jonah acknowledges that the younger Maneesh is a much better programmer.  Indeed, when their co-worker Riley (Sophia Lillis) discovers that Maneesh, whom she knew in school, has started working at Athena, she is dumbstruck that he’s in UX, rather than Data Analytics, which is far more suited to his superior skills. She knows that while he was still an undergraduate, Maneesh created a cutting-edge algorithm that had “ investment firms, lobbying groups, even an oil company” eagerly seeking him out. 

(The tech in the play is explained clearly for the most part, and with more details than I’m going to supply here.)  

It slowly emerges that Maneesh deliberately chose a department beneath his skills, because he had ethical concerns about what he had created.  The reason why he joined a tech firm at all is because of pressure from his parents, who are immigrants from India ambitious for their child. As if that were not enough, they had apparently put most of their dreams onto their older son, who was working at Athena when he died in an accident.  

Riley tells her boss at Data Analytics, Alex Chen (Justin H. Min) about Maneesh, and about his algorithm, and Alex schemes to hire Maneesh, and to get ahold of Maneesh’s algorithm, for a secret project that Alex is in charge of. We eventually learn it’s for the Department of Homeland Security and it involves helping them use AI to regulate immigration, and immigrants.

I say schemes, but Min  plays Alex as reasonable, almost laid back, and the playwright gives the character, who is himself an immigrant, both motives and arguments for his actions.

His arguments with Maneesh feel like the intellectual heart of “Data.” This technology has happened; Alex says; if we don’t use it, others will: “Data is the language of our time. And like all languages, its narratives will be written by the victors. So if those fluent in the language don’t help democracy flourish, we hurt it”

Maneesh’s response: “There have to be things in this world that can’t be quantified. There have to be

Alex’s motives are less complicated than his arguments: He has a wife and baby. (His boss, who is putting pressure on him over the telephone, has left on his desk a gift of a baby’s onesie with “Athena” printed on it.)

Libby labors over the motives for each of the four characters in order to work out a plot threaded with Intrigue and betrayals. Not all of this works; he has Jonah, the only white male we see – meant to suggest all the oblivious, insufferable white male tech bros in the company (and  in the universe)  — say at one point to Maneesh: “I’m gonna level with you. I’m kinda stupid,” which felt too on the nose. The ultimate result is a surface story whose mechanics are not all that plausible,  and frankly not as interesting as the fascinating ethical dilemmas that the play explores.

Luckily, the four splendid cast members help us overlook the playwright’s calculations by bringing these characters to life, even Brandon Flynn as Jonah. Or should I say him especially. Flynn is the only one of the four whom I remember seeing on stage before, and his performance both as Marlon Brando in Kowalski and  the kidnapped child at the center of “Kid Victory,” were memorable. 

Under Tyne Rafaeli’s expert direction, the design team adds an electric feel to the proceedings – and even to the moments between the scenes, which are blackouts framed by lights that travel along a rectangular path, evoking a computer that’s maybe too in-your-face. The design of the production is sleek or stark, cool or cold — like the production as a whole,  implicitly acknowledging the ambivalence with which we now treat tech.  Athena, after all,  is named after the Greek goddess of both wisdom and of warfare.

Data
Lucille Lortel Theater through March 29
Running time: 100 minutes, with no intermission
Tickets: $49 – $181
Written by Matthew Libby
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
Set design by Marsha Ginsberg, costume design by Enver Chakartash, original music and sound design by Daniel Kluger, lighting design by Amith Chandrashaker, dramaturgy by Ed Sobel
cast: Karan Brar as Maneesh, Brandon Flynn as Jonah, Sophia Lillis as Riley, and Justin H. Min as Alex.

Photographs by T. Charles Erickson