Deep History Off-Broadway Reviews

The structural gambit lends short, cheap pieces like Deep History, which runs to 70 minutes, a level of expansiveness they might not be able to achieve otherwise and sends you out the door with a grabby level of surprise and some tantalizing open questions. (And, in this case, a needle drop.) But then you think, How about we examine those open questions? “So how can we reconcile clear-headedness with an appropriate sense of immediacy?” “If baseline survival at all costs isn’t the right metric, what is?” Art need not have the answers here, but you’d like Finnigan to spend a little more time in the process of synthesis, spelunking around in the dark pondering what they might be.

What follows resembles a TED talk as much as a play, as Mr. Finnigan, armed with a laptop computer (his credits mention that he’s a game designer as well) and abetted by Hayley Egan’s video design, uses his father’s template to take us on a journey that stretches back 75,000 years, using a female protagonist who is “reincarnated in different bodies” as she travels through Asia, Africa, America, Europe, and, naturally, Australia.

Early in David Finnigan’s autobiographical narrative Deep History, he recalls how his career path diverged from his family's: Finnigan's father is a climate scientist, and their shared care for the environment propelled Finnigan to make theatre about environmentalism. He says, “Art can change people’s minds in a way that science sometimes can’t.” A viable claim and certainly a noble pursuit. But Deep History is closer to a TED Talk than theatrical art.

There is not a lot of traditional theatricality to Deep History. Finnigan relies on his skills as a storyteller as he jumps between the far distant past and current times. The only "visual aids" are some projections from his laptop computer and a length of brown paper on which he highlights his points. This may not be a must-see work for anyone seeking a typical dramatic presentation, but the reality is plenty dramatic for anyone interested in the geologic scale of climate change, and in gaining a different perspective on what the future may hold for us,

Opening on Thursday in the 99-seat Shiva space at the Public Theater, Deep History initially registers more like an absorbing illustrated lecture than a dramatic performance, as Finnigan reflects upon the ways humanity has somehow survived ice ages, volcanoes, plagues and other natural catastrophes. Finnigan vows to be “optimistic and constructive and forward looking” about how to successfully face up to dangerous climate change. “Survival is possible,” he asserts, scrawling that phrase in magic marker on a sheet of brown paper pinned to a board. Finnigan later adds another note, “Not everyone will make it.”

Running parallel to Finnigan’s explication of thousands of years of human history is a moment-by-moment account of out-of-control fires in 2019 surrounding his hometown of Canberra that threatened his best friend and his family. This didn’t really achieve the tension and suspense that it was clearly meant to inject into “Deep History.” But it did not need to; members of the audience already have tension aplenty from the current news reports full of climate emergencies.