And Then We Were No More, the world premiere play by Tim Blake Nelson playing at La MaMa through November 2, creates an ominous dread before the actors appear onstage. Upon entering the Ellen Stewart Theatre, the low menacing tones of Henry Nelson and Will Curry’s score made me unsettled, as if the ground beneath my feet was unsteady. A partitioned wall of glass designed by David Meyer, separated the stage from the audience, reminiscent of what would be found in a detention center. Its thick reflective glass forced me and the rest of the audience to look at ourselves. As the play unfolds, I will come back to thoughts about freedom and liberty, and wonder: are we looking into a prison, or have we stepped into one?
These and other questions hover in the air during the opening scene, which is deceptively ordinary as it introduces a distinctly sinister thread which will unspool over the course of the next two acts. A nameless official (played by Scott Shepherd) has summoned a nameless lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) to meet at this mysterious correctional facility. We are, presumably, in New York City, sometimes in the not so distant future. Our characters’ names are never mentioned: in this world, humanity has been reduced solely to one’s function. The official requires Marvel to serve as legal advocate for an inmate (Elizabeth Yeoman) scheduled to be executed the following day. The attorney´s presence is presented as a mere formality to keep everything within the facility moving smoothly; Shepherd, as official, continually refers to something called “the function,” a kind of systemic presence or artificial intelligence technology which seems to both underpin the operations of the prison and move the wheels of so-called justice. It is this function, says the official, that summoned the lawyer here today. Humanity now serves this AI system. The line between prison and a free society seems to have been erased. Sitting stiffly in her chair, the lawyer learns that the Yeoman murdered her husband, children, and mother. She did it. This is not to be disputed. This intimate will be killed for these crimes. The lawyer is not being tasked to determine this prisoner´s guilt or innocence, but simply how she is to be killed by the state. With pain, or without?
In accepting the case, albeit reluctantly, the lawyer uncovers disturbing information: the facility has been torturing the inmate by experimenting on her body and mind against her will. If Marvel´s opening interview with Shepherd is mildly anxiety-inducing, her interview with the prisoner is gutwrenching. Yeoman infuses her portrayal of the inmate with raw anguish and despair. This is a woman whose psyche has been relentlessly abused by forces far more powerful than herself or any singular person. Marvel masterfully balances the containment of her fury with her character´s legal professionalism. Her outrage becoming a stand-in for what must be the audience’s thinking. Within this coldly algorithmic society, the lawyer argues for mercy and morality. Does the heinous nature of her crime justify the state torturing her? In contrast, Shepherd’s character defends his facility’s specific decisions, as well as “the function” more broadly. In the world of the play, “efficiency” is paramount, and occasional barbarism is acceptable. For the official, debate and dissent are anachronistic, and critical investigation far too time-consuming. The need to know the truth may be important for a few, but the official argues that in bearing no direct relevance to individual lives, the quest is meaningless.
This unsettling play by Nelson–an actor perhaps best known for roles in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the HBO series Watchmen–will attract comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984 and Franz Kafka´s The Trial. But instead of looking to fiction of the last century, And Then We Were No More invites us to acknowledge more recent history. Yeoman’s incarceration evokes the horrors of Guantanamo Bay during the War on Terror as well as today’s disappearances of people by masked ICE agents– just this past week in the streets of Lower Manhattan. Marvel’s failure to voice the name of her client during the inmate’s hearing feels like censorship as well as dehumanization. Corporations and their interests–as portrayed by an analyst (Jennifer Mogback) with icy detachment as she observes the facility for any flaws–reminds one of Elon Musk and DOGE, ridding the US government of “inefficiency”, defined as anything deemed undesirable to an elite class of powerful individuals. One character, a machinist (Henry Stram), is so devoted to the work that he has moved into the facility full-time. He gushes like a lover when speaking about the “needs” of the machine, even though he has become a kind of voluntary prisoner himself. A Stephen Miller-like character, the machinist is a “true believer,” possessed by an irrational ideology which borders on the religious.
Part of what makes Nelson´s play so unsettling is its recognizability: the fictional depiction of this theatrical facility could be the logical conclusion to our current real world, as we casually surrender accountability and give agency over our lives to powerful technologies we barely understand. Onstage, the spikes of individuality have been shaved away into a smooth statistical average. Their (our?) lizard brains have been reacting so often and for so long to so much (mis)information that the ability to think feels futile. Why not just surrender to “the system,” so we can all “function better?”
Echoing the tagline from the British television series Black Mirror, this production seems to take place “just a few minutes in the future.” Directed with quiet skill by Mark Wing-Davey, And Then We Were No More is a compelling and disturbing theatrical experience of a world much closer than we’d like to think.
Ellen Stewart Theatre
September 19 – November 2, 2025
Photo by Bronwen Sharp.
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