“This Much I Know”-Our Puzzling Minds – Whip Smart and Beautifully Produced

By Alix Cohen

Reasoning and logic are the backbone of clear thinking and decision-making. Drawing conclusions from evidence and deductive reasoning have all but been jettisoned in the current political arena, traded for expediency and amelioration. (See Congress and the Supreme Court)

Inspired by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow about the science of decision-making, This Much I Know frames three personal journeys with recognizable and draconian movements.

Actor Firdous Bamji opens the evening with a loose monologue including reference to cell phones and theater exits that might pass for a tv warm-up. He then becomes Professor Lukesh addressing his psychology class:

“What if I told you I used to be married to a Zebra…the first thing you do, you can’t stop yourself, is you treat this as a true statement before it can be dismissed as false your mind first makes it true…this is why false ideas can be dangerous, they’re sticky…we are so desperate to make things connect.” Illustrations pop up on screen. Think about it. He’s right.

Lukesh’s wife, Natalya (Dani Stoller), is researching family connection to Joseph Stalin, writing what may or may not be a novel depending on what she finds. A traumatic event for which she feels responsible finds her extremely shaken. She’s angry when her sensitive husband, using logic, says it will pass.

Graduate student Harold (Ethan J. Miller) is the son of a highly visible, White Supremacist leader determined to keep him in the fold. Aware of his identity, students give him wide berth. The professor is appalled at Harold’s beliefs, but agrees to be his (quietly provocative) thesis advisor. Suggestions are insightful.

Tyrannical leadership and draconian bigotry portrayed are dependent on power and cult of personality. Still, the play is not about history or pedantry, but rather the way our minds work. It raises questions about how we perceive.

Feeling she has to get away, Natalya spontaneously flies to Russia. She leaves Lukesh a cryptic text indefinite about where she is, when, or even if she’ll return. Conversations with two very different Russian men (both Ethan J. Miller) about family assassination by the regime ensue.

We flash back to Svetlana Stalin (Stoller) meeting her East Indian husband – to- be (Mamji) and her defection. (She did, in fact, defect.) Natalya accepts that things were not as they seemed. Harold unwittingly opens to theories in Well’s thoughts. Both begin to escape ideologies to which they’d adapted echoing Lukesh’s “Ideas can be sticky.”

Dialogue sometimes overlaps as a scene changes. Several instances, at a microphone in half light, Bamji’s voice morphs from Stalin’s Russian-accented English to Harold’s southern father. Large, subtly animated portraits are among imaginative projections. (Mona Kasra)

The play is not a polemic. It’s smart and dense, showing very human confusion, coping, and adjustment. Cleverly directed humor arrives when least expected. Characters are vibrantly drawn and played; situations sympathetic, though quick to pass. The professor’s class notes subtly mesh with his problematic life. We leave with many questions.

All three actors are outstanding; complexity of character vivid. Multiple accents emerge credible. (Dialect Coach-Adrienne Nelson) Transitions are skillful. Emotion is focused and affecting.

Director Haley Finn has brought to life a kind of caucus race race with no rules, no clear direction, and no finish line. She keeps things seamlessly shifting and visually grounded.

A wall of sliding green slate screens and rolling platforms creates ersatz academic background and facilitates moving from scene to scene. (Misha Kachman)
Sound (Sarah O’Halloran) is insidiously good.

Photos by Carol Rosegg

This Much I Know by Jonathan Spector
Directed by Haley Finn
Through October 19, 2025
59E59th Street Theaters
https://59e59.org/shows/show-detail/this-much-i-know/