A Chekhovian Startup in Brooklyn

On its surface, Bixby Elliot’s “The Whole Sky All Diamonds” suggests a mashup of two contemporary cultural trends: Immersive theater that shifts audiences between different spaces and subplots, as represented downtown in recent years by shows such as “Sleep No More” and “The Death of Rasputin,” and the kind of workplace study that has become increasingly popular on TV. Since “Diamonds” follows a tech startup, “The Office” would be a better example of the latter than, say, “The Pitt.”In its overriding plot and themes, though, “Diamonds” draws inspiration from a much older source. Just as “Sleep No More” put a modern, noirish spin on “Macbeth,” “Diamonds” nods heavily to Chekhov, particularly “Uncle Vanya,” one of the playwright’s classic accounts of a society in transition, in which a country estate and its inhabitants represent an economy and a way of life being lost to industrialization and class mobility.It’s a clever notion, given the disruption — pardon the screamingly obvious term — that has marked our uneasy progression in recent decades from the end of the industrial era into the digital or, if you prefer, information age. Loft Story in Greenpoint, Brooklyn has been transformed into Füfl, a rising but still vulnerable company, where audience members are greeted as new employees, or “Nüflers,” to use the corporation’s predictably smarmy jargon.At a recent performance of “Diamonds,” running through August 22 under Jack Dentinger’s direction, I joined a group of predominantly young participants who were handed badges clipped to lanyards and told that, instead of writing our names, we should choose from an assortment of arts and crafts materials to create visual representations of our personalities.Words, crucially, are discouraged at Füfl; pictures and symbols are much preferred. A pair of worker-bee types, later revealed as Dara and Far, introduce us to perks such as a nap pod, an open bar and snack lounge — Füfl never likes its hires to be more than 50 feet away from food, it is explained — and “gender-neutral human maintenance stations,” or bathrooms.Early in the play, we meet Füfl’s charismatic leader, Mickey, who as portrayed by Adam Griffith suggests Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin as channeled by a young Steve Martin, with shades of Mandy Patinkin. “It’s not a job,” Mickey assures his Nüflers, or “the strong, the brave, the risk-takers,” as he likes to call all of his charges. “It’s not a stop on the journey…Your destination is you.”Audience members are then invited to either follow Dara, played here with a wonderfully deadpan sardonicism by Lucy York Struever — like Mr. Griffith, an alum of “Sleep No More” and “Rasputin” — or to linger in the main workspace, designed by Olivia Vaughn Hern to resemble a playpen for restless young adults. Over roughly two hours, we are free to move from room to room and thus, through different characters, get varying perspectives on the professional and personal quandaries facing them.A seeming Nüfler is exposed at the beginning as one of these characters, Elena, whose name should be telling for “Vanya” fans. A writer by trade, she has just signed on as a “productivity specialist” — the Orwellian position titles are among the funnier and more chilling elements in the play — but emerges as a disrupter in a more old-fashioned sense. Aigner Mizzelle, recently acclaimed for her performance as an aspiring boxer with a hard-knocks past in “The Monsters,” brings a very different kind of spunk and sensuality to the part.Jake Ryan Lozano plays Forrest, who is drawn to Füfl and to Elena despite his better instincts, and suffers accordingly. Zoë Laiz is cast as the similarly put-upon Jumee, who at one point ends up crouched in a corner, sobbing; at the preview, I felt a bit guilty bypassing her to follow the action in another room.The most unfortunate souls in “The Whole Sky All Diamonds,” however, are the wry but lovelorn Dara and Far. We learn Far has played a much bigger role in his company’s success than his nerdish demeanor — captured sweetly by Eric Wiegand, until the character inevitably explodes — suggests. Happily, you don’t have to be fully up to speed on the finer points of tech-bro backstabbing any more than you need to be an authority on late-19th century drama to enjoy this crafty little piece.

A Chekhovian Startup in Brooklyn

A Chekhovian Startup in Brooklyn

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