What if an algorithm functioned as a life Waze, guiding your biggest decisions by mining your data and knowing you better than you know yourself? In Disruption, part AI cautionary tale and part relationship dramedy, three affluent New York couples gather at a Tribeca restaurant to hear a pitch.
Andrew Stein’s new Off-Broadway play centers on Nick (John David Washington), a charming, slick Silicon Valley entrepreneur who must convince them to invest in his venture.
Among the friend crew are remote therapist Suzie and her Columbia professor husband; Jill, a corporate attorney and mother of two, struggling alongside her magazine editor husband; Jill’s younger, free-spirited sister and her gum-chewing surgeon husband. Joining Nick is his attractive, Gen Z, MIT-educated business partner, Raven, who immediately draws the wives’ envious ire, one of several anti-feminist tropes woven throughout the play.
It wants better content.
The inevitable algorithm
The combination of lighting, sound, and video design brings the algorithm to life as a ninth character, its digital projections guiding, tracking, and encircling the group to punctuate the unsettling notion that we are all being absorbed into the matrix. It’s chillingly effective both theatrically and as a meditation on the lack of boundaries for our mined data and also on how our minds are influenced, potentially to the detriment of our humanity.
When Suzie quips to Raven that we are “the Uber of a–holes,” she becomes the play’s outspoken conscience. Asked in return whether she’s offended, Suzie replies, “No. You disrupted my sense of restraint.”
Disruption joins a growing list—including Data—of new plays about algorithms, privacy, and artificial intelligence. Under Hersh Ellis’s sharp direction, the cast moves with precision. Simple staging during key dramatic moments balances the at times frenetic twists and turns of the plot. But ultimately, there’s not much more disruptive than rich, unhappy married people doing rich, unhappy, married-people-y things.
Just a few years ago, Disruption’s premise might have felt more prophetic. Today, beyond Spotify-curated playlists and Instagram feeds, Stein’s vision feels less speculative than inevitable.
Is ‘Disruption’ worth seeing?
In Andrew Stein’s Disruption, the scariest character never speaks a word; it just knows everything you’ve ever clicked.
- Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W 42nd St, New York City
- Notable performers: John David Washington, Joe Tippett, Conrad Ricamora, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Elizabeth Stanley, Irene Sofia Lucio
- Running time: 2 hours, including one intermission
- Performances through September 27, 2026
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