AI and its manifestations are hardly ever out of the news these days, and rightly so, given the huge implications for every aspect of our public and private lives. Hampstead Theatre has a deserved reputation for putting on plays that put big ideas into dramatic shapes, and so I approached this new play by Beau Willimon with anticipation. His reputation travels before him as the writer of House of Cards, and with a distinguished cast there was great scope here for both drama and insight.
In the end, sadly, we were neither thrilled nor informed.
The action opens on a split level set, with an interrogation room below and a conference room above, where agents can monitor proceedings. The setting is an American software facility where a security breach has just taken place. Two coders, Lena and Sasha, are under suspicion of trying to override a ‘kill-code’, and thus liberate an AI programme called Logos which has the potential to develop self-consciousness and therefore attain God-like properties. Under questioning from three highly contrasted security agents we learn about their past which also involves escape and liberation – Lena from an oppressive Mennonite community and Sasha from jail and torture in Russia – and their current relationship.
Along the way we also get to know the varied characteristics of their captors – Samira, an Iranian-American Sufi, lesbian psychologist; Olsen, a ‘dead straight’, thuggish spook out of central casting, and Ari, a Jewish Maori, former academic and AI philosopher, and now both commentator and participant in interrogation. There is also a technician, though his role is horribly underwritten, and almost superfluous. Large themes are in play in the back-and-forth, whether the nature of consciousness, the salience of religious beliefs, the meaning of loyalty and the limits of AI’s evolution, with the largest, hovering over all, being the potential for AI to escape human control altogether.
But, maybe as you can tell, there is just far too much undigested and apparently random material in orbit within this play for its own good. Like Stoppard at his least convincing, there is too much unintegrated didactic speechifying in the hands of characters who do not relate convincingly to one another or to us. We do not believe in their relationships except as a set of attitudes and poses on which various intellectual positions can be draped. The dramatic arc formed by the central relationship and a commitment to a certain definition of humanity crumbles, leaving only an assortment of notions, like the preface to a Shaw play rather than the play itself. The storyline fragments and becomes hard to follow; nor do we care enough at this point to chase it down further as the thriller framework loses all pace and credibility. The evening seemed much longer than it was, and a performance of the Maori haka at the end symbolised the unreconciled randomness of the whole experience.
This is a great shame, as the subject could not be more important and the cast are all proven, subtle performers. Kaya Scodelario, Cliff Curtis and Nathalie Armin, in particular, have strong individual moments; but the energy quickly dissipates, leaving little to take away afterwards.
Writer: Beau Willimon
Director: Ellen McDougall
Cast: Nathalie Armin, Cliff Curtis, Aaron Gill, Alec Newman, Kaya Scodelario, Luke Treadaway
Until 15 March 2025
1 hr 40 mins, no interval
Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan