Psychonaut Theatre’s interactive AI offering is weird and wonderful but lacks bite
By offering the chance for us to cosplay as advanced Artificial Intelligence in a far-flung future, Psychonaut Theatre’s latest production: The W.I.G of Life allows us to examine humanity’s impact on the world around us by presenting us with the binary choice as to whether to preserve biological life or allow it to extinguish.
Upon walking into the Camden People’s Theatre, we are presented with various different colourful accessories which is both a lovely touch of lightness – especially as this is billed as an AI Conference – and immediately forces the audience to be part of the performance. Francesca Fatichenti, Christof Hofer and Arielle Zilkha are on hand to greet and guide the audience and aid signing into a website where our responses are gathered in real time. It’s a fun and interesting set up but as such it does take a long time for the show to get started and this lack of forward momentum has a knock-on impact for the rest of the show. Before too long, however, we are presented with for and against arguments, in the form of scenes and skits, to help us make our decision.
This production is extremely technologically ambitious bringing together pre-recorded pieces for performance, stock footage of natural disasters, aforementioned live polling and a talking wig, ahem, sorry, the Central Intelligence. This is a high point and wonderful to see a small show utilising production values more associated with larger budgets in this manner. Combined with the comic skills of the actors and a decent amount of hairography, the results are highly entertaining. It’s unfortunate then that so much of the production was stuttered by too-long transitions, tumbleweed pauses and awkward-bum-shuffling audience participation. By instituting a Q&A session mid-way through the show, all drive in the show is lost and it takes a pretty herculean effort to get it up and running again.
It would be wonderful to see further iterations of the show presenting a sharper and more critical focus on humanity’s impact on the planet. By showing images of natural destruction but refusing to mention its cause, the show lacks the teeth needed to realise the stakes of the decision it is asking us to make, and by relying on humour so often, the moments of comic relief are denied their true power.
All in all, this is a fun and wacky evening presented by a talented troupe who aren’t afraid to aim high. The culminating number was one of the funniest things I’ve seen this year and although it doesn’t quite hit all the markers it sets for itself, it is still a worthy night out and a great piece of fringe theatre to see.
The W.I.G of Life is playing at the Camden People’s Theatre 29-30 August and Etcetera Theatre 7-8 September.