←Recommendations of Babel

As disturbing as it is timely, BABEL raises hard questions – which spin out into other hard questions – about genetics and science and power and privilege. Darkly comic and dappled with poignance, Goldfinger’s high-speed play feels like a cautionary tale – haunting, fascinating, and vital.

A powerful piece of speculative fiction. Goldfinger taps into the universal anxieties of parents in her portrait of a supposed utopia with insidious restrictions. While handily tackling large-scale themes around nature-vs-nurture and individual autonomy, she also manages to craft heartbreakingly authentic portraits of four people in crisis. An evocative story about society's obsession with perfection and about the chances we take for the ones we love.

Jacqueline’s plays unfailingly present beguiling and utterly original worlds, voices, and characters; in her capable hands, the familiar is made unfamiliar and vice-versa. So it is with BABEL, an alternately harrowing and comic piece that examines a world in which 'progress' has ushered in a new era of eugenics. Like the figurative frog in the boiling pot of water, Jacqueline turns up the temperature on her characters – and audiences – gradually, creating a dystopian future that feels just around the corner, but one that also beautifully illustrates the capacity for compassion in an uncompassionate world.

BABEL is a beautiful meditation on the conflicts between technology, parenthood, love, and control. A futuristic love-story that never once feels inaccessible or far-fetched, the way sci-fi so often feels. Goldfinger's take on the romcom is undeniably her own: it's smart and funny and messy and above all: it's poignant. The characters in her playworld are desperate, complicated, conflicted, and so real. A deft balance of heartbreak and hope that BABEL navigates showcases Goldfinger's immense skills as a dramatist. BABEL is a play that needs to be produced widely. Now. Right now.

BABEL speaks many of the thoughts/concerns I have when I think of the future--when I think of how we try to "perfect" ourselves and "protect" ourselves. Funny and scary, this play is a fast-paced, witty-dialogued exploration of where humanity may find itself one day. I can't wait to see it on stage and experience it with an audience.

Social science fiction is my favorite kind and BABEL is a shining example of the genre. Our current reality is ratcheted just a few levels up to create sticky questions about politics, choice, privilege, and ethics. And all that provocation comes in a simple-to-produce package.

I have always wished there were more futuristic / science fiction plays, most thankfully Jackie has written one that is wildly inventive and extremely producible! Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Babel is an ominous vision of the future. Jackie’s play is quick-paced, features her Goldfinger branded dialogue that is both snappy and poetic and is a boldly unique take on a dystopian future where babies are judged and categorized before they’re even born.

In Babel, the future is democratic but that doesn't absolve it from being dystopian. Of course, you don't see it if you're one of the majority that’s been genetically fashioned for success. When Renee finds herself pregnant with a statistically problematic baby, she must decide if it’s better to offer her a child a life of oppression or no life at all. Goldfinger presents a timely story about privilege within a democratic society and who loses when others win. An enthralling societal meditation on who we are, who we should be, and who we may become.

In this quick-witted dark-comedy, Goldfinger has traced a world where mankind creates a stringent rubric for the haves and have-nots through genetic manipulation. Her storytelling is deft, her humor is acerbic and her world-creation is so rich your imagination runs wild as you consider all the twisted possibilities of this not-so-distant-future.

BABEL lives at the intersection of what we can and can't control about genes, our children, their future. Goldfinger has situated these thorny questions in a near-future world -- far enough away that this genetic tweaking seems possible, near enough that we still see ourselves in this perilous landscape. This is a funny, quick-witted, tense and nimble play that explores what we'd do in the name of safety, what it would feel like to play God, what happens when playing God ends up being just as difficult and messy as you'd guessed. We'd like to be sure: we can't.