The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

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More About

• Mike Daisey
• Shenzhen
• Al Gore
• John Longenbaugh
• Kevin Phinney

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Raconteur/monologist Mike Daisey specializes in biting the hands that have fed him, as he did--when still in Seattle--with his 2001 breakout hit 21 Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com. This time, The Agony aims to do for Jobs and Apple what Al Gore did for the SUV in An Inconvenient Truth. It does that and more. This is Daisey at the top of his volcanic form--indignant, irate, and harder to ignore than the weather. Behind our beloved gadgets, over in Shenzhen, China, are thousands of workers being exploited and mutilated to produce Apple's shiny objets d’art. Daisey is still “an Apple fanboy,” and he tells admiringly of Jobs' exile and return to Apple. But the show's focus is how our iPhones are assembled under horrific conditions by workers barely on puberty’s cusp. It’s a cascade of information, delivered with consummate mastery by Daisey, who’s somehow both seated throughout and a dervish. Such is his level of moral outrage in the show that you pray there’s an EMT standing ready with a defibrillator—in case he bursts a blood vessel during one of his tirades. KEVIN PHINNEY [See Kevin's full review, and alsoJohn Longenbaugh's profile of Daisey.]
Fri., April 22, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., April 23, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., April 24, 7:30 p.m.; Tue., April 26, 7:30 p.m.; Wednesdays-Sundays. Starts: April 22. Continues through May 22, 2011