Ads

"Ads" starts out pretty interesting: A woman steps onto a soapbox and calmly asserts that the Internet creates a "drug effect" for people seeking "faceless, bodiless" interaction. That she is herself a projection—a hologram shown on a slim screen far upstage—renders her idealism as naive and outmoded as it might, in other contexts, sound attractive and timely. The large stage in front of her, lit slightly to underscore its emptiness, underscores the sense that something's missing here.

That something is not just a living human body; it's also the comforting aura of sincerity. The next hologram to step on the soapbox, a man in a suit who gives a motivational speech about your "true self," makes it even clearer that the line between saying something and selling something is blurrier than we would like to admit.

"Ads" asks the kinds of questions the theatre needs to ask in the 21st century. The premise promises to challenge the possibility of being sincere and of having convictions that we can call our own, now that sincerity and individuality have become marketed products and interaction is more mediated than genuine. Where creator and director Richard Maxwell goes wrong is in his refusal to pursue these issues after raising them.

Instead, he gives up. Thirteen more holograms step onto the soapbox and tell us what they "believe." They are by turns humble, brash, confident, scared, religious, agnostic. It's an uncomfortably sincere rainbow-of-urban-life parade, easy to sympathize with, perhaps, but difficult to engage. As it becomes clear that the play intends to go nowhere and that the potential for interaction with live bodies or even with the fact of a vacant theatre will go unexploited, interest wanes and disappointment sets in. "Ads" may be fascinating as an archive of faith and self-knowledge in contemporary America, but as a theatre event, it's as empty as its wasted stage.


Presented by New York City Players, Performance Space 122, the Public Theater as part of Coil and Under the Radar at Performance Space 122, 150 First Ave, NYC. Jan. 8–Feb. 6. Schedule varies. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.ps122.org.