Rebecca Talks With Alexa, or “I’m sorry there are some things I cannot do yet, and explaining why is one of them” is a tragic-comic investigation of grief, trauma, women’s sexuality and loneliness. Recently widowed Rebecca pulls her new Alexa device out of the box her Silicon Valley son sends her on her husband’s Yahrzeit. “He wouldn’t want me to be alone” she muses half to herself, half to the “Chinese spy” she accuses Alexa of being. Alexa becomes a better listener than anyone in Rebecca’s life. Rebecca reminisces about a “necessary kiss” in Mexico; remembers being a child during the Holocaust; she wonders what to have for dinner. From the mundane to the traumatic, the play investigates the daily travails of an ordinary woman’s life during COVID, which has magnified her isolation from friends and family.
“What are you doing, Mom?” her pregnant lesbian daughter asks her when she calls from Jerusalem: “Me? I’m just sitting here talking to Alexa, flashing the postman, drinking schnapps.” In “conversations” ranging from sex to death, from the film Young Frankenstein to the TV show “Frankie and Grace”, we bear witness to a 21st century moment, a conversation reflecting the empty pathos of technology and its uncanny ability to provide a kind of connection. At once, philosophical and comical, the play explores timeless, contemporary issues about life, death and loss: “Alexa, what is a mezuzah? Why do bad things happen to anyone? What is war?” Rebecca’s conversation with Alexa takes twists and turns we would not imagine when she pulls her out of the box. “I bet you were suffocating inside that box” Rebecca says, empathizing with the spy, the device, that becomes her confidante.