Michael Giltz: Theater: "The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs"

The storyteller Mike Daisey is new to me. I'd been hearing about his work for years -- The Last Cargo Cult, How Theater Failed America and so on -- all of them invariably intriguing and well-reviewed. He's clearly a Spalding Gray 2.0, combining stories with autobiography and journalism in a unique and fascinating manner.

And what awkward, wonderful serendipity. Daisey has been touring and refining this piece about his love of Apple and how it collided with the company's use of child labor in China for more than a year. Now he's opening in New York just days after Jobs died and the world has turned the tech titan overnight from a brilliant and wealthy businessman into a cross between Thomas Edison and Gandhi (but better!).

We were assured by the Public that the show would go on, while respectfully offering its condolences to the Jobs family, the staff at Apple and those who knew him. It needn't have worried. This show is first and foremost a love letter to technology in general and Daisey's obsession with Apple. That love may be disillusioned by the end (Daisey compares it at one point to a battered wife and he'd only reached his frustration over "forced updates" for software). But love it is.

The set is stark and simple, with a glass-topped desk, a chair, a glass of water and a neat stack of paper, apparently with notes on them. If they were written in Daisey's own hand, consider that one more nod to Jobs, who Daisey tells us was profoundly inspired by a college course on calligraphy. Behind Daisey is a stark metal frame that soon is illuminated with l.e.d. lights for a vaguely technological aura that's straightforward and effective, if a little too reductive towards the end when the lights break down briefly into random patterns to reflect Daisey's confusion and unhappiness.

Daisey takes to the stage and launches into his tale. He's in a lawless area of Honk Kong that I've visited and which he describes well, an area where you can purchase literally anything from drugs and sex in various combinations to pirated copies of anything and everything. Daisey's drug of choice? An iPhone that can be "jail-breaked," or set free so it can be used all over the world and be unconstrained by the limits Apple would place on it.

Daisey's style is at first a little manic, but it's just like the loud Hawaiian shirts he dons when trying to bumble his way into interesting conversations a la Columbo. Daisey addresses each part of the audience, side to side and front to back, with an almost carnival barker air, transparently letting you into the pleasures of his performance. His voice rises and falls, he lets out a yowlp when necessary and after a dramatic peak is reached and a change in setting is due, Daisey quietly turns over one sheet from that stack of papers and we prepare for the switch.