At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be in the headlines every day, this densely philosophical techno-thriller by Beau Willimon – creator and showrunner of Netflix’s House of Cards – certainly feels timely. Computer coders Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are locked in NSA waiting rooms, awaiting questioning by special agent Samira Darvish (Nathalie Armin) and their boss, Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis). They’ve been developing a ‘kill code’ for the artificial general intelligence system, Logos, that they’ve been working on. But now it looks as though someone has tried to override the system and ‘release’ Logos into the outside world. Was it them? Or was it Logos itself?
This production, directed by Ellen McDougall, jumps straight into big, ethical questions about humanity mimicking God. It’s a favoured trope of science fiction – to which Willimon brings a lot of contemporary theoretical thinking on AI and an Edward Snowdon-flavoured ‘hacktivist’ dimension. He gives Lena, a former Mennonite who is possibly, unknowingly, looking for something to replace her traditional faith, and Sasha, a Russian civil rights protestor, plenty of backstory acreage, as characters lengthily debate truth, falsehood and exactly what Logos is.
This is a very talky play, to which McDougall adds movement and pacing by using Azusa Ono’s lighting design and Alex Eales’s split-level set – with the NSA agents watching Lena and Sasha from above – to weave in flashbacks and to keep the characters from simply becoming talking heads. Nevertheless, there’s something kind of intoxicating in how much theory the play throws at us, as we swing from chats about dark matter to notions of the universe itself creating God.
But while there’s drama inherent in the idea that humanity is a step in evolution rather than its end, the play frequently feels bogged down by its dialogue, with McDougall and her cast trying to chisel bits of character into monolithic speeches. In particular, Scodelario’s Lena feels absent even when she’s on stage, while Treadaway is mainly angst and accent. The best performances come from the supporting cast. In the best tradition of disastrous academics, Curtis brings a ramshackle twinkle to the chaotically cynical Abrams. Meanwhile, Alec Newman basically runs away with the play’s second half with his quirky turn as the fiercely patriotic and proudly average NSA agent, Olsen.
And for the times that this production stumbles under the weight of its determination to say Big Things, there’s also the transcendent combination of Zakk Hein’s videography, projected like code – or the future – onto the stage, and Tingying Dong’s expansive sound design. Or there’s Sasha’s excited comparison of Bach composing his first major piece with climbing a mountain, backed by composer Colin Stetson’s arrangement. A bit like the play itself, it’s self-important but also strangely thrilling.
