Can this sci-fi play, in which advanced technology brings people back from the dead, breathe new life into an exhausted conversation? No.
Writers Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman do acknowledge existing media such as Frankenstein in More Life, but as much as any story about the future sparks intrigue and humour (in this dystopia they’re no longer familiar with the concept of putting the heating on), it’s unable to explore new existential questions which haven’t already been examined in the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back”, or in anthropology at Hampstead Theatre back in late 2023.
The central ethical questions here, of course, relate to the permanence of death, and – because these reanimated people can’t sleep or feel hunger, for example – what it is to be human. When Bridget (Alison Halstead) is woken up again in 2075, in a different body, after being fatally hit by a self-driving car in 2026, it’s the job of scientist Victor (Marc Elliott) to ascertain whether the robot is capable of replicating Bridget’s past memories – it’s been 48 or so years, after all.
They are reluctant to feed the machine details so as to allow it to recall information itself, careful not to overwhelm it with questions. After all, what are humans if not a collection of recollections?
Following several instances of trial and error, where Victor and his assistant Mike (Lewis Mackinnon) adopt a rather paternal approach to nurturing the bot, she comes face-to-face with her ex-husband Harry (Mnemonic and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’s Tim McMullan). Frustratingly, for all the focus on the lab experiments, McMullan has a far more thought-provoking character arc, not least because – I’d argue – his introspection about past versions of himself has a much stronger applicability to us as audience members than a hypothetical scenario about artificial memories.
McMullan is excellent as a staggering and wandering Harry who is, understandably and convincingly, mesmerised and bewildered by being presented with an ‘echo’ of his wife in a different body, all these years later, when he’s now in a relationship with his second partner Davina (Albion’s Helen Schlesinger). The presentation of the Bridget pre-accident as a ‘ghost’ (Danusia Samal), not only conveys a disconnect between the emotions of Samal and the expressionless Halstead, but doubles up as a representation of Harry’s connection to his past relationship. In his character we see hints of the distress and concern that comes with undoing the closure of death, but also an eagerness to learn more about who he was before. It isn’t the main focus here – it should have been – but there’s a sharp comment here on our hyper-capitalist society and drive to constantly look forwards and reinvent ourselves that we fail to turn back and consider the moments which have shaped our personalities and values over the years. Recollection can only go so far.
Though as I say, it’s underwhelming that this feels like a secondary premise to the familiar ‘tech bringing back the dead’ angle we’ve seen many times before. Other ideas from Mooney and Yeatman are also underdeveloped. Bridget promises not to tell anyone what the rebellious Mike did to help her, but it wasn’t clear to me exactly what that was, and the broader idea of what it means to be human doesn’t go far beyond the sentimental set design of Shankho Chaudhuri (props fill up his curved orange shelves in the second act), Davina’s complaints about aging and the use of foley produced solely through human noises.
This co-sound design from Zac Gvirtzman (also the production’s composer) and Dan Balfour is one of the show’s most impressive and cinematic elements. The distance between the human and the artificial is, again, expressed here by having other actors speak for the synthetic robots. Halstead’s lip-synching is commendable, as is her ability to express so much in just her head movements and the lines alone (her hands rarely leave her side). Gvirtzman’s electronic score is appropriately atmospheric, too, and moments of darkness lean into the story’s horrific undertones.
The same applies to earlier scenes about a Victorian scientist electrocuting a dead body to appear to show signs of life (there’s some brilliant crackling and buzzing work from the chorus here), which comes with an air of it being a spectacle and performance, and seems to come full circle at the end when Bridget is presented as the first prototype of a technologically immortal existence, almost making a scathing criticism of our fascination with new and shiny tech over the centuries.
I say almost, because after all the musing on the characteristics of humanity, in the play’s conclusion, the playwriting duo posit that our interactions with the natural world provides the most basic sense of being human, even if this is not in a complete sense. It just strikes me as a convenient cop-out from fully interrogating the biological and philosophical in a way which is different and original to the sci-fi stories which have come before – a hack, if you will.
More Life is now playing at the Royal Court Theatre until 8 March.
A Babes in Arms performance is scheduled for 18 February, with an Age UK and captioned performance taking place on 25 February.
The show will be captioned and chilled on 25 February and 1 March respectively.
Production images: Helen Murray.
Disclaimer: I was invited to watch ‘More Life’ for free in exchange for a review of the performance as a member of the press. I did not receive payment for this article and all opinions stated above are honest and my own.
