By Marilyn Lester***In 2011, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman published Thinking, Fast and Slow, a heady book about decision-making. Some years later, acclaimed playwright Jonathan Spector brought that book more or less to life in his puzzle box of a play, This Much I Know. It’s at once deep, funny, evocative and enthralling. It’s the play w
e need now in these times of wildly divergent thought, polarization and confusion. How much do we really know we’re left to think.
In this Hayley Finn-David Lloyd Olson production at 59E59 Theaters, three stunning actors bring this conundrum of the mind and its ways to life with exquisite brilliance. Finn’s direction keeps the pace swift and interesting enough through a few dry bits of exposition; but she’s savvy enough to capitalize on fast-paced scene changes to keep the engaging narrative moving.
The plot is a threaded one: three stories moving in time shifts in and out of the other; information is accrued as the narrative advances, leading to successive “ah-ha” moments. It’s a device that’s been mined in film (Pulp Fiction, Traffic, Crash) but not so much on stage. Central to This Much I Know is Lukesh (an extraordinary Firduous Bamji) a psychology professor who teaches the science of the mind and how it operates; his lectures (we the audience are his surrogate students) are passionate in describing the beauty of the work of the brain. It is incredibly fascinating stuff. But life will have its way and intervene. His w
ife, Natalya (a superb Dani Stoller) abruptly takes off for parts unknown and is largely incommunicado. Meanwhile, a troubled student, Harold (a versatile Ethan J. Miller) implores Lukesh to be a thesis sponsor; his assigned professor has rejected him on political grounds. These life events outside the realm of science and the classroom will test Lukesh.
Mysteriously, Natalya’s unexplained, out-of-the-blue departure leaves Lukesh so much in the dark that his anxieties and worries are only ameliorated in the classroom. Eventually, it’s revealed that she’s tracking a family connection to Svetlana Alliluyeva—Stalin’s daughter—who, becoming disillusioned with her father’s ideas, defected to the United States in 1967. Stoller neatly captures this complicated and colorful woman, a textbook example of what goes into changing one’s mind, rethinking and taking responsibility for one’s actions. Similarly, Harold turns out to be the son of a notorious white supremacist, struggling with the beliefs he was raised with. There’s also subtext in these three stories—how does the mind deal with situations beyond a person’s control. Each 
character is specifically faced with such a dilemma.
In This Much I Know, Spector, through crisp dialog, humor and a lot of meat on the bone asks us “what do you think you know?” And like Spector’s 2018 predecessor, the award-winning Eureka Day, which skewered the culture wars of the moment, this play demands we look at “all sides now” as the song suggests. But on this express train through the landscape of the mind, all is not cut-and-dried. This Much I Know is also a love story. Add to the science of the mind the knowledge that the heart possesses. And therein lies a happy ending.
Beautifully realized and clever set design is by Misha Katchhman. Danielle Preston (costumes), Colin K. Bills (lighting), Sarah O’Halloran (sound) and Mona Kasra (projections) all effectively contributed to the production.
This Much I Know runs through Sunday, October 19, 2025. Run time: 2 hhours, 30 minutes including an intermission. Tickets are $66-$131 (incl. a $6 fee) | and $50 for 59E59 members. Go to 59E59.org
59E59 Theaters is located at 59 East 59th Street, NYC
Photos by Carol Rosegg
