Two Point Oh – Location, Tickets, Reviews
With the use of a swiveling table and a couple of digital projectors, The Active Theater cleverly presents Two Point Oh, an emotional, innovative production written by Jeffrey Jackson and directed by Michael Unger.
The story centers around Elliot Leeds, a brilliant software mogul who unexpectedly dies in a plane crash at the play’s opening. Leeds’ untimely death is a devastating blow to his wife, Melanie. She refuses to leave the couple’s 40,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art mansion.
Then Melanie discovers Elliot’s most stunning technological innovation: a virtual simulation of himself that lives within the mansion’s high-tech system and displays itself on digital screens. Programmed with an artificial intelligence more advanced than the world has ever seen, Elliot 2.0 appears strikingly human; he shares the same personality, memories, and thoughts as his human counterpart, and is able to interact with Melanie so well that it seems as if Elliot never really died.
When virtual Elliot begins to overwhelm Melanie’s life, she must make a choice: keep alive her husband’s greatest creation for the sake of preserving his legacy and quasi-companionship, or destroy it to restore normalcy and force herself to move on.
A heartfelt drama, Two Point Oh makes one ponder the true definition of death, and consider the power — and potential danger — of advancing technology.
Recommended if. . .
You enjoy plays with witty, fervent scripts brought to life by intense, expressive performers;
You appreciate productions that stretch the audience’s imagination;
You are intrigued by the notion of artificial intelligence someday rendering humans obsolete;
You applaud passionate characters and are not afraid to witness them at their most vulnerable; or
You enjoy sci-fi stories about inventions getting out of hand, for example: I, Robot, The Matrix, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
LOCATION
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street
New York City
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RUNNING TIME
2 hours 5 minutes, 1 intermission
TICKETS
UPDATE: As of October 15th, 59E59 Theaters has SOLD OUT of tickets to Two Point Oh; to get on the ticket wait list for all evening performances, swing by the theater starting at 4pm (noon, for matinees).
$18 (click here for tickets)
DATES
Performances on Tuesdays – Sundays through October 20th
NEWS & REVIEWS
New York Times
Death Did Not Part Them, and Some People Don’t Like It
New York Theater
Two Point Oh, directed by Michael Unger and presented by the Active Theater through October 20, is largely a satisfying work of theater. The play explores the implications of a virtual human being, as does Elliot himself, in the best tradition of sci-fi masters like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Theatre Is Easy
The best way for me to describe Two Point Oh would be to say that it is a mix between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall and The Disney Channel’s original movie Smart Housewith some Battlestar Gallactica references mixed in.
NYTheater Now
The script for Two Point Oh is at its strongest when it embraces its essence as an extremely clever logic puzzle that, like Elliot, asks questions without regard for how the answers might play out. It is less successful when it attempts to frame questions such as technology and the nature of life into the standard political-left-versus-political-right framework (truly, what audience hungers for more of that these days?).
CAST & CREW
(partial list)
Written by Jeffrey Jackson
Directed by Michael Unger
Featuring Jack Noseworthy, Karron Graves, James Ludwig, Antoinette LaVecchia, and Michael Sean McGuinness