Review: ‘Private’ Explores What It Means To Be Under Constant Watch
Warmly witty and chillingly tense, Mosaic's world premiere of the brilliant 'Private' astutely imagines an all-too-possible future.
Behind closed doors, within the confines of one’s own home, most expect that what they say, do, and think remains private, undisclosed if they so desire, unobserved and unrecorded by outside eyes and ears.
Some, like Georgia (Tẹmídayọ Amay), one-half of the married couple under pressure in Mona Pirnot’s near-future drama Private (★★★★☆), would insist on at least that level of privacy in their own home.
Others, like Corbin (Eric Berryman), Georgia’s “promising, up-and-coming engineer” husband, might more easily be persuaded to drop the fragile veil of privacy if it meant finally earning real money.
Offered a dream job and fat salary at a Fortune 500 tech company, Corbin is ready to sign away “access to anything” to seal the deal. That means granting the company the right to monitor his phone, data, car, office, home, anything, purportedly in order to protect the firm from corporate espionage.
This also means that Georgia’s life would fall under the same surveillance — her calls and conversations all monitored and logged.
Director Knud Adams’ brilliant world-premiere production conveys the play’s points that the future is now for those already being monitored and logged by their devices, and in their homes by Siri or Alexa or whatever other technology is listening.
And whether set in the past, present, or future, a couple weighing a paycheck against a bitter compromise is a dramatic dilemma that never goes out of style.
In terms of visual style, Adams and his creative team wed Pirnot’s big ideas to minimal design, subtly but surely evoking the not-too-distant future, à la films like Her or Ex Machina.
Scenic designer Luciana Stecconi surrounds the actors in a plush, bare, fluorescent-lit oblong set, peach-toned in certain light, and a vibrant canary yellow when in the form of Corbin and Georgia’s home, the play’s main battleground.
Lighting designer Masha Tsimring captures every mood inside that plush yellow and peach box, while Danielle Preston’s costumes hit the target of character-revealing and fashion-forward enough to feel slightly foreign to the present-day eye.
As the design elements merge beautifully to create the image of a believable future, leads Berryman and Amay combine their talents to create a credible image of modern marriage. Convincing in every aspect of their coupledom, the pair ensures with their powerful, versatile performances that the play feels less like science fiction than cold, contemporary truth.
Sophie Schulman offers excellent support playing Corbin’s co-worker Abbey, who apparently has accepted whatever compromises necessary to maintain her paycheck. Although Abbey might not be utterly at peace in her position as both observer and observed.
As Georgia’s close confidant Jordan, Ben Katz likewise limns an effective portrayal of a well-written role. Virile Jordan and his pornstache pose a different kind of threat to Georgia and Corbin’s union, but still a real and existential threat to their security, and their right to exist beyond others’ scrutiny.
Exploring the meaning of privacy in a surveillance state, Private introduces a delicious premise, and toys with it fruitfully, without fully following through on the implications of signing away access to anything. The play’s somewhat abrupt end leaves a lot of meat left to chew on that theoretical bone. Audiences can take that as a prompt to continue the discussion in the supposed privacy of their own homes and devices.
Private runs in-person through April 17 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. A video-on-demand presentation will be available for streaming until April 17. Tickets for in-person performances are $50 to $68, and individual tickets for streaming are $40. Call 202-399-7993, ext. 2 or visit www.mosaictheater.org.
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