Steve Jobs subject of Public Theater show

Is Steve Jobs too beloved now to be criticized? Not to Mike Daisey, whose solo show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," begins previews at the Public Theater Tuesday night.

The activist monologuist, who has toured the country with earlier versions of this theater piece for the past 16 months, created the work after seeing what he calls "appalling" human rights and labor violations in the southern China factories that make the world-changing devices by Apple and other new-tech companies.

But that was before Jobs' death Wednesday, before the onslaught of global grieving. In an interview published Monday in the blog Gothamist.com, Daisey said, naturally, "There will be changes to everything, changes to the fundamental nature of the monologue itself. . . . Not only the work itself but also the context in which the work is received."

Although he acknowledged that Jobs' inventions "have played such a major role in my life," the writer-performer did not shrink from what he called Apple's "capitalistic cowardice." Daisey, who said he was too busy preparing the show to respond to Newsday's request for an interview, told Gothamist that Jobs "had the power and capability to completely reform the electronics industry, and he was exactly the person to do it."

Why didn't he? "I don't know," said Daisey.

"Why do we all sell out our ideals as we get older?. . . I mean, it's a remarkable thing to realize that we're so disconnected from our manufacturing that all these things we own, we have no sense of how they're actually made."

The monologue, which Daisey typically delivers extemporaneously at a desk with just a microphone, officially opens next Monday.