What makes a life? Kandinsky theatre company’s bruising sci-fi drama sweeps us thrillingly from 1803, when scientists electrocute a corpse to simulate stuttering new life, to 2074, when private tech companies experiment with downloading brain scans of the dead to infallible new bodies. A smartly composed exploration of greed, loss and the loneliness of eternity, More Life is an incredibly human play about technology.
Victor (Marc Elliott) is our futuristic Frankenstein, a bulldozing consultant obsessed with progress, preservation and a dead woman he hopes will be the first success in his company’s experiments. As Vic brings Bridget (Alison Halstead) to a kind of life, the wonderfully precise ensemble watches as she tries on her new body. Under James Yeatman’s delicate direction, the voice is dislocated, alienating the physical form. Halstead is wonderful here, estranged from her own body, limbs suddenly stiff and unknown.
Shankho Chaudhuri’s set, surprisingly chameleonic for something so orange, resembles what someone in the 70s would imagine the future to look like. We are surely foolish to think we can predict our future more accurately today. Written by Lauren Mooney (dramaturgy by Mooney and Gillian Greer), the story is inspired by the investments of Silicon Valley tech bros, but the ensemble’s squabbles over details reveal how uncertain we remain about what lies ahead.
Most of Kandinsky’s work began at New Diorama under David Byrne, now artistic director of the Royal Court. More Life is a bright indication of the vision he brings with him. The pace drops in the second half, but there’s so much to engage with. Beyond intellectual and ethical debates, this play stabs at the heart. Tim McMullan roils as Bridget’s husband, unable to cope with the shock of her return. He gazes at her as one would an old videotape. Helen Schlesinger is softly stern as his second wife, host to this uncomfortable reckoning and aching for her own eternity.
The show’s working title was Meat Sacks, a phrase transhumanists use to refer to our material forms. By interrogating the possibility of cheating hunger, pain and death, Kandinsky illuminate what we lose in conquering immortality, and reveal a kind of wonder in these saggy, exhausted, ravenous meat sacks of ours.
