At last, theater for the IM generation. Most of the action in Rolin Jones’ clever and harrowing “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” receiving a Pentium-powered production at Studio Theatre under director David Muse, unfolds before an (invisible) computer screen. The keyboard is pounded by Jennifer Marcus (Eunice Wong), a 22-year-old California girl who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, germ phobias and agoraphobia but is also a genius.
Peppy and ravenously curious, Jenny spends her days and nights solving weaponry communications glitches for the U.S. Army and instant-messaging with online pals, including backsliding Mormon Terrence (Cameron McNary). Her only friend in the “real world” is Todd (James Flanagan), a slacker who is sorely self-aware and swift with wisecracks, yet terribly sweet.
Jennifer was adopted from China by her parents, Mr. Marcus (David Rothman), a former fireman and an affectionately rumpled stay-at-home dad, and Adele (Charlotte Akin), an overachieving executive striver who pushes Jennifer to conquer her neuroses.
Although she loves her parents, Jennifer longs to find her birth mother. Trouble is, she can’t go beyond the front door.
Using parts procured from assorted defense contractors and her brilliance with robotics, Jennifer builds Jenny Chow (Mia Whang), a robot replica of herself that has no fears and can fly. Using Jenny Chow to find out about her biological mother, Jennifer goes on a painful emotional and psychological journey that cannot be eased by hitting control-alt-delete.
Building a thinking and feeling robot in your bedroom using an ordinary PC is far-fetched, but Mr. Jones’ dialogue is so sprightly and chattering that the right mood of bright absurdity is struck from the start.
Nothing sticks out as terribly odd because everything in Jennifer’s world is ramped up and off-kilter — a jumble of computer code, advanced physics and pop-culture references. Mr. Muse keeps things moving with sugar-rush energy, as if the entire cast has been eating nothing but Skittles for the past few months.
A dissonant symphony of tics and repeated actions, Miss Wong is cheerily arrogant and utterly convincing as the hermetically sealed Jennifer, but she also reveals the raw torment of a young woman suffering under warring compulsions.
Her opposite is the laid-back partyer Todd, and Mr. Flanagan demonstrates, as he did earlier this year in “Kimberly Akimbo” at Rep Stage, that he has a flair for playing these peculiar and endearing young men who use funny voices and expressions to keep their real feelings at bay.
Miss Whang’s Jenny Chow is a haunting mix of artificial, “learned” behavior and a subtle yearning to prove she is more than the sum of her parts. Mr. McNary finds comic nuggets from a variety of character roles, especially the hormonal Terrence. Mr. Rothman plays the kind of sweet, accepting dad any child would want. Although Miss Akin has the thornier role as the wound-tight Adele, her love for her child comes shining through.
Mr. Muse plays into the comedy’s goofy logic by making the show hilariously low-tech. Jenny Chow’s first flight is represented by a Barbie doll zinging down a clothesline, and the passage of time is signaled by a montage worthy of a movie from the 1940s, with calendar pages flipping by on pizza boxes, character’s heads, hats and other props. Jennifer educates her creation by having her read “Anne of Green Gables,” “Das Kapital” and the Kama Sutra.
For all the comedy, a darker strain runs through “Jenny Chow.” Jennifer’s neuroses proliferate like a computer virus in her brain, and she abandons her robot “child,” much the way her birth mother abandoned her 22 years ago. Her genius — and her quest for perfection — does her in. Jennifer’s mind is both her gift and her prison — because of her compulsions, yes, but also because she is unwilling or unable to see the face of God in her flaws.
***1/2
WHAT: “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” by Rolin Jones
WHERE: Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW
WHEN: 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through July 31.
TICKETS: $25
PHONE: 202/332-3300
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