Mike Daisey takes on Steve Jobs and Apple in his latest one-man show at the Public (photo by Kevin Berne)
Martinson Theater at the Public
425 Lafayette St.
Extended through March 18, $75-$85
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org
www.mikedaisey.blogspot.com
Less than a week before Mike Daisey’s one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was set to open at the Public Theater this past October, its title subject died. “This moment is an opportunity to peel back the surface and get at the secret heart of our relationship with Steve Jobs,” Daisey explained in a statement that announced that the show would still go on as scheduled. After its successful run in the fall, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is back through March 4, with Daisey exploring as only he can America’s love-hate relationship with Apple — and Apple’s disturbing relationship with China. Seated behind a desk with only a glass of water, yellow lined sheets of paper filled with scribbled notes, and a black cloth to regularly mop his face, Daisey (The Last Cargo Cult, How Theater Failed America) is an entertaining mix of Spalding Gray, Lewis Black, Sam Kinison, and Michael Moore. First gaining prominence with 21 Dog Years, his monologue about working at Amazon.com, Daisey now turns his attention to one of Amazon’s chief rivals, Apple. With gleeful delight and no shame whatsoever, Daisey proudly proclaims himself to be a major techno-geek obsessed with every new gadget Jobs, Wozniak, and company come up with, particularly the latest world-changing sensation, the iPhone. But he also reveals the dark underside of Apple, detailing his trip to Shenzhen, China, where the enormous Foxconn facility makes half of the Earth’s electronic products, including Apple’s. Posing as a journalist, Daisey spoke with Foxconn employees who were quick to discuss horrific working conditions that result in so many suicide attempts that the factory has put nets up to catch the jumpers. For much of the two-hour show, Daisey marvelously balances humor and pathos, gesturing with his hands and pausing for just the right effect, but when he turns into more of an activist, not only pointing out Apple’s questionable decisions regarding its association with Foxconn but insisting that the public needs to get involved and do something about it, the play goes overboard into a didacticism that would be better left on the cutting-room floor by director Jean-Michele Gregory. And at one point, Daisey seems to stop the play in its tracks to yell at the audience when describing the ridiculous size of the Foxconn complex, creating an unnerving moment that detracts from an otherwise masterfully told tale. But being an activist is part of what Daisey is all about, as shown by his recent appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher and other television programs, his comments on the New York Times finally delving into the Apple-China connection, and a hand-out distributed to the audience on their way out of the theater. To spread the word, Daisey will even be releasing a free PDF transcript of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs on his website, encouraging people to put on the play themselves, in any format they want. Steve Jobs was a genius who changed the world; Daisey continues to show that in his own way, he is a genius as well, albeit one with a very different agenda.