Review: Technology, education clash in Alliance’s ‘Start Down’

Through March 6. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. $20-$39. Alliance Theatre Hertz Stage (at the Woodruff Arts Center), 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.

Bottom line: High-tech premise, midrange results.

If, like me, you’re one of those people who sat through much of the widely lauded movie “The Big Short” utterly confounded about what the heck those Wall Street characters were even talking about, don’t be too intimidated by all of the technological jargon in “Start Down.”

Our protagonist (or antagonist, depending on how you look at it) is a “pig-headed and analytical” computer programmer named Will. And, yes, he talks throughout the play about the modern economy and financial flexibility, spouting lots of IT-speak about IPOs and logical algorithms, market-ready software formulas and the “ed-tech sector” as a growth field. Whether he’s too clever for his own good — or too clever for everyone else’s — soon becomes debatable.

Thankfully, at its core, Eleanor Burgess' "Start Down," this year's winner of the Alliance Theatre's 12th annual Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, condenses most of its highfalutin high-tech-ery into a clearer, simpler focus. When the whiz-kid Will designs a cutting-edge program that threatens to turn traditionally interpersonal classrooms into glorified (self-centered) laptop labs, he clashes with Sandy, a devoted young high-school history teacher who's none too keen on being phased out of her useful calling.

Burgess generally balances their conflict, despite eventually tipping the scales a bit. While it’s considerably easier to like and relate to Sandy and her point, one needn’t be a grasping computer geek (per se) to get where Will and his counterpoint are coming from. In Minneapolis-based director Jeremy B. Cohen’s Alliance premiere, the roles are performed with appropriate feeling and intellect by Annie Purcell and Eric Sharp, respectively.

Less thankfully, however, that Will and Sandy happen to be a longtime couple in their private lives puts a credible strain on “Start Down,” essentially reducing its headier and heartier matters to a trendy, situational romantic dramedy. The extra wrinkle seems somewhat redundant and unnecessary, when the play’s second leads are another dedicated teacher (Tracey Bonner) and another business-driven boyfriend (Josh Tobin), whose relationship is also potentially derailed by taking the same opposing sides to the same common dilemma.

Slightly problematic, too, is how Burgess tends to make the play mainly about them — Will and Sandy, their like-minded friends, and even the goofy character of Will's startup co-worker (Andrew Puckett) — more effectively than she fully explores or questions what's theoretically best for the students. Will could earn fame and fortune or Sandy might lose her career and sense of identity, but do the kids learn any more from a newfangled, computer-generated lesson plan? Better yet, perhaps, does such a concept spark them to want to learn more?

There’s no telling based on the final moments of the Alliance’s show, which involve one inner-city student (Anthony Campbell) and an elaborate simulation of the test program (projection design by Caite Hevner Kemp). Or maybe that’s just how it’s intended, not skirting the issue so much as leaving each of us to look for our own answer and take our own side.