While the five characters in the play are all basic corporate stereotypes, Loeb's dialogue and the concise direction by Greg Lutz keep them from being caricatures. Loeb's ability to bring humor into the play may seem odd when talking about such heavy topics as death and disposing of millions of bodies, but it lightens the tension in spots while also satirizing the entire group project scenario. That makes the play a chilling analogy to these factual past projects especially in how the group members often make light of, and joke about, the project they are working on, even when it, like those other projects, deals with the potential death of millions of people. Loeb also is clearly making parallels to how groups of people worked on both the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where Berlin officials met to coordinate plans for what we later learned was known as the Final Solution, and the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the bombing of Hiroshima and employed hundreds of thousands of people yet only a few knew of the exact end goal of the project. When you add in the moments of panic, paranoia, dread and hysteria in the play, many of which are not only similar to the confusion around COVID-19 so many of us had when it first appeared, but also how so many people currently believe we aren't being told the truth about certain things, or worse, believe in conspiracy theories, it makes Ideation a shocking and eerily relevant drama. While the play premiered years before COVID-19 caused mass confusion and uncertainty on a global level, you can't help but imagine that groups of people held similar project planning sessions to address potential issues about COVID-19 when they didn't know how contagious the virus was. I spent many years on project planning teams in corporate America and am impressed at how expertly Loeb uses phrases and interactions that are authentic to anyone who has been involved on large scale corporate projects. To say any more about the plot would give away the many shocks and surprises in Loeb's striking script. Are they there to strategize for the impact of a potential natural disaster where millions of people could be infected by a highly contagious, deadly virus, with their goal being to find a way to save the human race by remediating those exposed by secretly disposing of the bodies without causing mass panic? Or are there other factors at hand and the project is more involved than they have been led to believe? However, there is uncertainty that crops up as the group members lay out their plans. The play is told in real time over 90 minutes and centers on a group of corporate planners who have come together in a conference room to strategize a plan for an emergency situation that focuses on containment, liquidation and disposal. iTheatre Collaborative presents the Phoenix premiere of this tense and smartly written drama in a well-cast and tautly directed production.
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