Jennifer Marcus is a brilliant, Chinese-born 22-year-old woman who was adopted by an American family as an infant. She is a computer genius. But she is struggling with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, which her mother doesn’t understand. She also suffers from agoraphobia, wherein she is terrified to go outside her home. Although she was brought up in comfort, she feels that she is not understood by her mother and works to find and meet her birth mother in China.
“The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” at Stagecrafters, opens in the present and we see Jennifer conversing with a bounty hunter. She wants him to find the whereabouts of Jenny Chow, the robot/clone she built which has disappeared. As we go back a liitle in time, we see that it helped her communicate with that biological mother since she herself fears leaving her home. If it sounds a bit surrealistic, it is, but it is also very realistic. She loves her father but has a difficult relationship with her mother, when the mother learns that her daughter is seeking out her birth mother.
Jennifer (Regina Zeng) need money to build the robot, so she takes on a job (which can be done at home in front of her computer) with the Defense Department. As I stated at the beginning, she IS a genius. She is also nerdy. She is also arrogant. But she knows how to enlist the aid of others in her quest. There is the pizza delivery man, Tod, (Mekhi Brown), a not very bright pot-smoking guy who has a crush on Jennifer. There is a Morman missionary, a Russian born scientist, and a guy from the Defense Department, all of whom she communicates with on her computer, and all portrayed brilliantly by Steve Wei.
Jennifer earns money and builds while she is always fighting with her mother (Jenn Hsaio), a hardworking woman who is so practical, she doesn’t understand her daughter. Brian Scott Campbell plays her father in a kinder and more loving manner.
Then there is Jenny Chow (Ilana Huyia Lo), the robot that Jennifer has created to be her and to travel to China and connect with the birth mother who was found by the Morman genealogical researcher. Jennifer can talk with her through Jenny Chow in China and she can see it all from her computer. If this sounds rather far-fetched, even silly, let me say that it was not. It felt very real. Director Suki Saurus has put together this remarkable ensemble to present Rolin Jones’ play, which won an Obie Award in 2006 and was later, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Drama. But it is so much more than a drama. It is sort of a techno-comedy-drama that is both simple and real. I loved the evolution of the story through the development of the robot as we watch Jennifer interact with each of the other beautifully drawn characters.
This is a powerful play about identity, and family dysfunction in the world of technology. Learn more about these characters and watch what happens when the robot moves, takes on the character of Jennifer, and goes to China. Rarely produced on the American stage, it is a winner!
“The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” by Rolin Jones at Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19118, , 215-247-9913, thestagecrafters.org thru April 26,, 2026
Philadelphia Theater Reviews by Frank Burd 