Spare Parts ★★★★

Billionaires have spent years trying to buy everything: personal skyscrapers, a 10,000-year clock, and dinners on icebergs. Why not immortality?

Playwright David J. Glass knows a thing or two about aging. A vice president at a biotech company who has lectured at both Harvard Medical School and Columbia University, Glass has spent years studying the very process that drives the central question of his new Off-Broadway play Spare Parts: What would people do if science offered a real chance to cheat death?

Set in a sleek private research facility, the play centers on wealthy entrepreneur Zeit Smith (Michael Genet), who is funding an experimental procedure designed to halt — and possibly reverse — the aging process. To make that dream a reality, he recruits a team led by scientist Chris Coffey (Rob McClure, trading nanny drag for lab coats after his Tony-nominated title role in Mrs. Doubtfire), along with Coffey’s ambitious graduate assistant Jeffrey Jordan (Matt Walker). Completing the quartet is Ivan Shelley (Jonny-James Kajoba), Zeit’s devoted assistant, who gradually finds himself drawn deeper into the moral and personal consequences of the experiment.

Glass clearly knows his subject matter inside and out, but the first half of Spare Parts often feels as though that expertise is crowding the stage. The early scenes each run just a few minutes longer than they need to, filled with explanations of research and procedure that, while interesting, sometimes dampen the dramatic momentum. It’s not quite exposition dumping, but there is simply too much science and not enough drama. Director Michael Herwitz keeps the staging clean and the ideas clear, but even his steady hand can’t quite disguise how long the opening movements take to reach their destination. And there’s at least one major missed opportunity: The script repeatedly references Ivan’s unseen mother, Beatrice, yet never gives the audience the chance to witness a scene between them — a moment that could have been utterly delicious.

It takes nearly an hour before the dramatic engine truly ignites. Once it does, however, Spare Parts moves with impressive speed, its ethical questions and personal stakes tumbling forward in a series of increasingly tense confrontations. The play suddenly becomes the thriller it seemed poised to be all along, which only makes the earlier sluggishness more frustrating.

At least the production always looks striking. The polished high-tech setting designed by Scott Penner has the sleek menace of a villain’s lair in a vintage James Bond film. One half expects Dr. No himself to stroll in and unveil the master plan.

Spare Parts raises intriguing questions about mortality, ambition, and the ethical boundaries of scientific progress. With a sharper scalpel applied to its first half, those ideas might land with even greater force.