{"id":312155,"date":"2026-08-03T00:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/312155\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T00:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T00:20:08","slug":"disruption-a-play-thats-less-disruptive-than-it-thinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/312155\/","title":{"rendered":"Disruption: A Play That\u2019s Less Disruptive Than It Thinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

August 2, 2026 8:00 pm <\/p>\n

By Melissa Rose Bernardo<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Andrew Stein\u2019s tech-propelled drama comes at a most opportune moment<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn David Washington and Conrad Ricamora in Disruption. Photo: Emilio Madrid<\/p>\n

Last week, when a friend and I were trying to settle on an after-work meeting spot, I asked Google Gemini for assistance: Find a restaurant in [insert neighborhood here] with happy-hour specials after 6 p.m. It instantly spit out the perfect choice, and we were on our way.<\/p>\n

Andrew Stein\u2019s Disruption, which just opened at off-Broadway\u2019s Pershing Square Signature Center, focuses on something similar\u2014but much more ambitious, and far more insidious. \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing,\u201d explains tech entrepreneur Nick (The Piano Lesson\u2019s John David Washington in a slick, extremely charismatic performance), \u201cwill fundamentally change the way we live our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick gathers his oldest friends and their respective wives\u2014art director Paul (Joe Tippett) and corporate lawyer Jill (Jagged Little Pill\u2019s Elizabeth Stanley), surgeon Barry (Jason Ralph) and photographer Mia (Liberation\u2019s Irene Sofia Lucio), Columbia prof Ben (Oh, Mary! star Conrad Ricamora) and psychoanalyst Suzie (Shaunette Ren\u00e9e Wilson)\u2014to seduce them into investing, monetarily and\/or emotionally, in his latest high-profile venture: an algorithm designed to help people \u201cmake better decisions about the stuff that really matters.\u201d His business partner, the younger and slightly predatory Raven (Emma Kikue), looks at what she calls \u201cthe perfect control group\u201d and offers three specific examples, one from each couple\u2019s lives: \u201cShould I stay married? Buy a brownstone? Have a kid?\u201d Nick compares it to the real-time navigational app Waze: \u201cWhen you\u2019re at a fork in the road, wondering which way to go, we\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Read David Finkle\u2019s \u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606 review here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that Disruption\u2014the latest entry in the fast-growing tech-theater genre (see also: James Graham\u2019s Privacy, Ayad Akhtar\u2019s McNeal, and Matthew Libby\u2019s Data)\u2014is timely. Every day we\u2019re faced with countless decisions, so wouldn\u2019t it be a relief to possibly surrender the decision-making to an algorithm that might make a better, more informed choice than our own tired human brains could make? As Raven says, \u201cthe world creates almost nine hundred quintillion bytes of new data every day\u201d\u2014a program like this would be your filter. But using AI to pick a place with $3 oysters is one thing; trusting it to tell you to leave your wife, the mother of your kindergarten-bound twin boys, is entirely another. Are these men\u2014all supposedly smart and highly educated\u2014so malleable? It\u2019s tough to get behind a couple of them. Seriously\u2014if buying a $4 million brownstone is what\u2019s keeping you up at night, well, to quote that great prime-time philosopher Kourtney Kardashian: \u201cKim, there\u2019s people that are dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though it centers on trailblazing (and rather threatening) technology, Disruption is a pretty by-the-numbers play. You won\u2019t need an algorithm to predict the play\u2019s ending; from the first scene, it\u2019s clear where nearly all the characters will end up. (Nick\u2019s final moments teeter on the ridiculous, though Washington pulls them off.) Considering how insidious and all-consuming this imaginary algorithm is, the Hersh Ellis\u2013directed drama should feel more menacing. Instead, it just feels a little shady.<\/p>\n

Disruption opened Aug. 2, 2026, at the Pershing Square Signature Center and runs through Sept. 27. Tickets and information: disruptionplay.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 2, 2026 8:00 pm By Melissa Rose Bernardo \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Andrew Stein\u2019s tech-propelled drama comes at a most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-312155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}