★★★

“Gray O’Brien with his languid movement and rugged good looks gives a towering performance”

Co-writers Sir Ian Rankin and Simon Reade bring a new Rebus story to the stage. The deliberately claustrophobic-looking set (Terry Parsons) is a traditional dining room with a large table centre stage and two doors leading out, left and right, which stay almost permanently closed. The walls are crammed with framed oil paintings, all individually lit. A surfeit of table and wall lamps and a suspended chandelier exude a luscious creaminess (lighting Matthew Eagland). We are at the wine and whisky stage of an impressive dinner party and the guests have been playing a murder-mystery game. Clues are discussed and hypotheses shared. We hear mentions of ‘motive, method and means’ and it’s all delightfully intriguing. Director Loveday Ingram skilfully moves her actors around the stage, seating them in different ways to provide some variety within a fundamentally static setting.

I confess to never having read a Rebus novel or seen him on TV so I might have missed expected nuances inherent in his character, but Gray O’Brien with his languid movement and rugged good looks gives a towering performance of the newly retired police detective. Initially, he spends much of the time at a distance from the other guests, prowling in the background, observing. He breaks the fourth wall to speak to the audience of his ability to ‘read the room’, the trilling of his Scottish burr a joy to the ears.

There is a lot of backstory to get through before we can have the thrill of piecing together who might have it in for whom but there is no kitsch, the script is well-written, and there are some genuinely amusing one-liners. But this back story is predominantly concerned with characters we never see and it becomes an effort to follow. Just as in the murder-mystery game the dinner guests play, the initial excitement wears away and the truth, when it comes, is somewhat underwhelming.

The ensemble cast does what it can but all the characters bar Rebus don’t have much to work on and everyone generally underplays. There’s some uncertainty within the ensemble too, particularly at the start of the second act that stuttered in this performance, but it will all gain in fluency once the run (and UK tour) has established.

The party hostess Harriet (Teresa Banham) is almost transparent in the first act but comes to life in the second with a fine burst of nervous energy. Her husband Paul (Neil McKinven) rather goes the other way, showing fine bonhomie at the start before withdrawing from the later affray. Most regrettably, for the role could be a fine one, is Billy Hartman (Jack Fleming), a casino owner with a shady past but the performance lacks the flamboyance that might be expected from such a character. Then there is Billy’s trophy girlfriend Candida (Jade Kennedy) who, as a supposedly superficial ‘social influencer’, shines out above the mediocrity around her; and, lastly, former lawyer Stephanie Jeffries (Abigail Thaw) isn’t given much to say for herself but does a fine look of indignation and disgust.

With Ian Rankin co-writing, this seems like a missed opportunity for creating something better than an average whodunnit but the central role of John Rebus just about saves the play.

ANTHROPOLOGY at the Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“some interesting twists and turns along the way”

Anthropology, Lauren Gunderson’s new play premiering at the Hampstead Theatre, is a convoluted tale about sibling love that attempts to transcend life as we presently know it. It begins as a tale about a missing woman, and her sister’s refusal to give up the search for her. Since sister Merril is a tech wizard specializing in artificial intelligence, it’s not long before A.I is employed as a tool to help Merril in her mission. But at the heart of Anthropology is an unnerving question: can artificial intelligence mimic humans so well that people begin to respond to them as though A.I was human? And even more chilling: that A.I might produce intellectual and emotional interactions that are somehow even more relatable than the humans they imitate?

Gunderson’s protagonist Merril and her sister Angie have endured a tough childhood marked by their mother’s descent into drug addiction. Merril stepped up as Angie’s parent when mother Brin no longer could, so it’s not surprising that Merril would continue searching for her sister when everyone else has given up. Merril’s grieving is so intense, however, that she turns to A.I not only as a way of trying to find clues about what happened to Angie, but also as a way of maintaining a relationship that she cannot bear to relinquish. A.I Angie, it turns out, is just as prickly and unsettling as the original, and part of the pleasure of Gunderson’s humorous script is watching Merril (played beautifully by MyAnna Buring) caught continually off guard by her digital sibling’s unerring ability to cut to the chase regarding Merril’s failed relationships with lover Raquel (Yolanda Kettle) and mother Brin (Abigail Thaw). There’s a lot more story packed into this tense 90 minute thriller of a plot, and some interesting twists and turns along the way. Ultimately, however, Anthropology is less about the success of artificial intelligence in predicting human behaviour. It is more a story about failed human relationships.

“ninety minutes is too short a time to explore such complex subject matter as artificial intelligence in the context of a family drama”

Anthropology begins encouragingly enough in a gleaming white box of a set, designed by Georgia Lowe, sparsely populated by a podium, a screen, and two open lap tops on the floor. MyAnna Buring as Merril gives an intriguing account of her search for Angie by using A.I to sift through her sister’s digital footprint, looking for clues. Merril is very good at her work, and soon digital Angie has become video Angie, confidently predicting that human Angie may still be alive. There is, however, a price to pay. Merril will have to repair her relationships with Raquel and Brin in order to know for sure. It’s a great set up, and suggests all sorts of directions for the plot to go. The production is further enhanced by a medley of tech inspired lighting (James Whiteside), video design (Daniel Denton) and back projections, plus music and sound design (Max Pappenheim). But what begins promisingly as an exploration of artificial intelligence as solace for grieving (a subject also explored by pioneering sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov), ends up in Anthropology as yet another tale of absent parents and sibling rivalry. Even the wit and sparkle of Gunderson’s dialogue cannot quite disguise the recognition that this is pretty familiar territory, plot wise.

In fairness, ninety minutes is too short a time to explore such complex subject matter as artificial intelligence in the context of a family drama. Anthropology is a very American play; the all female cast treads all too familiar territory in such intimate settings. For all Merril’s high tech bravado, she is still fettered by the assumption that her life and career, are always at the mercy of relationship repair and unmet expectations regarding parenthood. It’s a brave attempt on Gunderson’s part to try to create a cutting edge drama about cutting edge technology. But the results are predictable, given the shortcomings of the humans (still) in charge.

REBUS: A GAME CALLED MALICE at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

★★★

“Gray O’Brien with his languid movement and rugged good looks gives a towering performance”

REBUS: A GAME CALLED MALICE at the Cambridge Arts Theatre followed by UK tour

Reviewed on 2nd September 2024

by Phillip Money

Photography by Nobby Clark

Previously reviewed at this venue:

REBUS

REBUS

ANTHROPOLOGY at the Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“some interesting twists and turns along the way”

“ninety minutes is too short a time to explore such complex subject matter as artificial intelligence in the context of a family drama”

ANTHROPOLOGY at the Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 18th September 2023

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by The Other Richard

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Anthropology

Anthropology