Searching for Forgiveness

Right to Be Forgotten

When Derril Lark was seventeen years old, he made a mistake. Since then, he has done his best to make up for it and be a better person. Ten years later, he has moved on, but the internet has not. His mistake is still the first thing you find when googling his name. He knows what he did was wrong, but doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance? But how can that happen when the worst version of ourselves lives on, trapped in amber for everyone to see?

Right to Be Forgotten, by Sharyn Rothstein, is getting its Chicago premiere at Raven Theatre under the direction of Sarah Gitenstein. It follows Derril on his attempt to have his past scrubbed from the internet. It has a difficult line to walk. Derril has to have actually done something wrong, or there’s no defense at all to the information still being public, but it can’t be so bad that we lose all sympathy for him. The play largely succeeds on this front for me. I will admit I was holding my breath at the start of the show, dreading another piece of art decrying ‘cancel culture’ where we somehow always end up prioritizing the feelings of the person who did the bad thing over the person who actually suffered harm, but the show threads that needle pretty solidly. There’s a third act attempt to complicate the story from Derril’s past that I think doesn’t quite work, but overall, they did a good job of portraying a character who did something wrong for you to actually forgive and portray a character that by all accounts seems to have done the work to earn that forgiveness. It gives his desire to be ‘forgotten’ seem plausible and not merely an attempt to escape any accountability.

A few US states and, more notably, Europe have tackled this issue with laws revolving around the concept of the play’s titular “right to be forgotten.” In practice, it allows people to have information about themselves removed from search results in those places. The issue balances the public’s right to access to information with an individual’s right to privacy. It’s a complicated question, and to the show’s credit, it leaves the question explored, but not neatly resolved. Without giving anything away, Derril definitely caused another person harm, even if it was unintentional, but should that meaningfully bar him from finding work or a relationship when the first thing anyone will know about him is that mistake? For how long? On the other hand, men with much worse intentions than Derril have relied on past sins being buried so they can go right on committing them. Add into this the fact that the information isn’t being maintained out of altruistic concern by a neutral panel of truth seekers. It’s being collected and maintained by technology corporations to make money and for whom the desire for more clicks can easily outpace a desire for accuracy or fairness.

The mechanics of Derril’s past and the various ethical positions on access to information would be interesting enough on their own, but the play wisely embodies those positions in a cast of extremely well developed characters. Adam Shalzi does a very good job giving Derril just the right balance of awkward vulnerability without stumbling into tropes about ‘nice guys.’ The highlight of the show for me is Derril’s attorney Marta, played by Susaan Jamshidi. She is a lawyer who likes taking on Davids as clients to fight their Goliaths, but her focus on ‘the cause’ can blind her to the person in front of her, and she embodies a brashness that can be both charming and ruthless by turns. On the other side of the issue is Marta’s former friend and colleague Annie, played by Lucy Carapetyan. Annie is now a lawyer and lobbyist for the tech firms fighting ‘right to forget’ legislation. For her own reasons, some deeply personal, starting the down the road of limiting access to information, any information, is a slippery slope with potentially catastrophic consequences. Where the line should be drawn and who gets to draw it is a complicated question, but rather than simply pontificate, the ethical question merely gives some stakes to the personal conflict. Their conflict is both personal and philosophical and in Carapetyan and Jamshidi’s hands, the mix of frustration and grudging respect crackles on stage.

The show is tackling a couple of very big ideas, forgiveness and the role of technology in our society, and in lesser hands, either could have overwhelmed it. Because the show smartly focuses on the people in the story and their relationships, the big ideas define the stakes and changes to those relationships, but never tip over into sermonizing. Most importantly, the caliber of acting on stage was extremely high, and the result was a highly enjoyable evening.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented February 9 – March 26 by Raven Theatre at 6157 N. Clark, Chicago.

Tickets can be purchased at raventheatre.com or by calling (773) 338-2177.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.