“Data” Shows the Quiet Horror of Going to Work
The new play paints a clear picture of the tech industry with blurred ethical lines.
Since I started a job in tech a year ago, my LinkedIn has been bombarded with cryptic messages. They all reek of companies with vague, one-word names and “mission” statements laden with buzzwords: “AI” and “data-driven.”
This is the new world of tech. Platitudes about the latest and greatest ways we can harvest data and use algorithms and do...who knows what with it.
“Data,” a new play at the Lucille Lortel, submerges us into the tech world. Yet it’s more than just the stereotypes of company swag and ping pong. It’s unafraid to say the quiet part out loud, to ask the questions many of us have about work, whether we’re in tech or not.
We follow Maneesh (Karan Brar), a recent grad working in the user experience department of Athena, a renowned Silicon Valley tech company. When we first meet him, he’s entrenched in a ping pong match with his mentor, Jonah (a lively and bouncy Brandon Flynn), who chides him for missing the latest post-work Taco Tuesday.
These callouts to the silliest parts of tech life are heartily specific, and for that, genuinely funny. From the first moments, I found myself dropped into what felt like a very real company, down to their seltzers and the barrel jeans of Riley (Sophia Lillis), Maneesh’s former classmate.
The show’s pace is slower for the fast-moving company it creates—conversations with weighted pauses, lengthy back-and-forths no one really has time for in the obsessive busyness of the corporate world—but the tension is there early on. Maneesh is always nervous, always stressed. It’s clear he feels complicated about working for Athena. He and Jonah work in user experience (UX), but everyone knows that he’s far better suited for the best and brightest department, data analytics. That’s the team that actually develops the company’s software. In UX, he’s just putting a wrapper on it. UX doesn’t get to know the details of what the company’s working on until much later in the process, and Maneesh is content with that.
Jonah and Riley—who is on the data analytics team—are convinced Maneesh is throwing his career away. But he’s wary. He wants to keep his head down, he says.
It only takes one conversation with the smooth-talking leader Alex Chen (a wily Justin H. Min) for Maneesh to change his mind. He moves to data analytics, and finally Alex and Riley can share what the company is really working on.
It’s a first-act twist that’s as horrifying and relevant as you’d worry it’d be.
What follows is an entanglement of ethical questions. Can Maneesh and Riley, who has secretly recruited Maneesh to help her, stop what the company’s doing? But is it really up to them? Is it worth sacrificing themselves?
These are the most compelling parts of “Data”—the ethical and personal complexities of having a modern career. They’re best when they’re getting at the heart of the emotion. Playwright Matthew Libby is adept at capturing the anger that comes with working somewhere with moral ambiguity, the frustration that shows up to do something you don’t really believe in. When we first see Riley, she’s wearing a bandage around her hand from slamming a water glass down too hard.
When these arguments are tied to too-coincidental plot devices and trauma dumps, they remove us. Maneesh is plagued by the grief of losing his brother—which has brought him to work in Athena in the first place—yet we don’t feel the depth of his decision, nor the emotion. Riley says she can’t quit because she has student loans and a mother to send money to, but when she screams these facts into the ether, they feel contrived and hollow. They’re creations to keep the characters where they are rather than specific and true.
Instead, the larger moral and philosophical questions become most compelling. Even if Riley could leave, where else would she work? Is she ever going to find fulfillment from work? Is that what work is even for?
“Data” does give us some decisions, some motion, some answers. But the larger questions remain as loud as the ping pong ball on the set’s table. Even if things change for these people, this company, what about everything else?
As I navigate my own career, I can feel my own emotions and boundaries swirling. First, I was set on a career that felt fulfilling. But can a job really do that? Should it do that? Fine, then a company that does something good. But is that even possible, for a company? Then, OK, do I just need to work for some place that’s not outright evil?
“Data” show us how ethics get quietly brushed away, how boundaries blur in the modern corporate world. How it’s easier to go against your ideals when there’s money on the line, when there’s Taco Tuesday to attend and ping pong to play. You’re slipping, and suddenly, you’re realizing, as Riley aptly screams: “Every day I get up and I make the world a worse place.”
How to See “Data” Off-Broadway
“Data” runs at the Lucille Lortel Theatre until March 29th. Trigger warning to all my past and current coworkers who read this Substack—but it’s worth the watch.
How I found out about it: My lovely friend Dev invited me! Since the invite, I’ve gotten a lot of vague paid ads on my social media feeds and seen a few positive reviews from my trusted theater TikTokers.
Why I went: The premise reminded me a lot of “Job,” a play that had a brief Broadway run last year. My favorite parts of that show were about its conceptions of work and the tech world.
How I got tickets/How to get cheap(er) tickets: +1 to Dev! If I hadn’t gotten tickets this way, I would have bought on TDF, which has tickets for under $40. Regular price tickets start at $49.
What Else I’ve Seen
January was an admittedly slower month for theater for me. After “Opedipus,” it was a few weeks before I saw “Chess.”
It admittedly may be one of the hottest tickets of the season. Hot in the sense of prices and excitement—the audience was cheering from the second the lights went down—and also in the show’s content. I mean, Aaron Tveit, Lea Michelle, and Nicholas Christopher all singing their hearts out while in a love triangle? Pretty good.
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I did enjoy myself at this show, particularly for the performances, music, and the quips they’ve added to make it 2025-2026 appropriate. Yet “Chess” as a musical feels incongruent and messy to me, plagued by a story that has high stakes yet never is able to properly make you feel the pressure of them. This production has heavily revised the material, but it still comes up short.
If you’re looking for some stellar vocals and sunglasses choreography, it’s the show for you.
Either way, here’s to more musings about work and theater that brings up morally relevant questions.
<3
Zoe
Good to see your review of "Data" show up in our BCR email list. I am going to recommend a young friend of mine who works for Meta to see Data - sounds similar to the struggles you are going through at your corporate job. Have you heard of J.B. -- play by MacLeish [sp?] from late 1950s -- wonder if there are links to "Job." Alan barcrawlradio.com