“Visionary asshole.” This is the description bestowed upon the late Apple CEO in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: The Musical, and one that many might also attribute to the show’s original author, Mike Daisey. (For those unfamiliar with the saga, Daisey wrote and performed the much-discussed The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, describing the rise of Apple and the horrible working conditions for Chinese workers making Apple products. It included Daisey’s disturbing first-hand accounts from his trip to the Foxconn factory, but it later came out that he did not actually witness much of what he claimed. Since then, Daisey has apologized, re-written the monologue and made in publicly available for others to use and perform).

That said, the musical version of The Agony and the Ecstasy, written by Timothy Guillot, succeeds very well in a different way than Daisey’s monologue. The show seamlessly weaved together all of the history and news associated with Apple and Foxconn, combined with humor, drama, and, of course, music. Songs told most of the story, but did so without being too distracting or camp; in fact, they were a big plus. A projector was put to good use in providing additional visuals to the bare-bones set, such as a catalogue of Apple products over the years and a tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint. All four actors did an impressive job singing and rotating between multiple characters, especially Steve Isaac, who played both Jobs and Daisey — from this reviewer’s seat Isaac even slightly resembled Jobs, but maybe he just got his “laser death stare” down.

The script does not hesitate to criticize Jobs while acknowledging his genius, and his full awareness of consumers’ undying devotion to our “shit,” i.e. electronics. Guillot, and Daisey, pose the moral question of whether having this stuff is worth the price paid by 400,000 Foxconn workers and others like them. If the show is meant to be poignant and evoke guilt, it accomplishes that. But it also points out that Jobs was a problem-solver, and in his image perhaps we can solve the problem of reconciling our love of shit with workers’ rights.

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 20, 10 p.m.
Tuesday, July 23, 9 p.m.
Sunday, July 28, 4 p.m.
Mountain at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave NW
Tickets can be purchased here.