A whimsical approach to Artificial Intelligence exploring what is actually real leaves me wanting more.

‘The Diviners’ is brought to the Golden Goose Theatre by the innovative The People Show theatre company. The Diviners explored four broken A.I entities trying to navigate and make sense of the world that they were in. The show was vibrant, colourful and engaging to watch.

I really enjoyed the use of colour in this show, it really helped to bring it alive and be playful. Because it was rich with so much colour and warmth, you quickly forgot that you were in a black box theatre. The way the piece involved music and movement was really impressive, at certain times the movement and music took place felt right and justified. Whenever the A.I figures were trying to explain something that they couldn’t articulate well, movement took over their bodies and music took over their mouth and did the explaining for them. The choices were very clear and it worked.

Fiona Creese, who played one of the A.I entities had a beautiful movement piece to which she was fully committed to. She used her body as an instrument and let the sound of the music flow through her. All of the Actors were fully committed. It was nice to see how much conviction they had over their characters. I was very impressed to see that they gave so much depth to a character that was artificial.

It would have been easy to go down the route of playing robot like caricatures but I loved that they were filled with so much emotion even if the A.I wasn’t sure of what emotion it was. They leaned into the awkwardness and quirkiness of their characters. I thought Gareth Brierly’s comedic timing was great. You could tell how much fun he was having on stage and invited the audience to do the same. He was so easy to watch. Unfortunately, there was a leak in the theatre due to the weather, however Brierly used this to his advantage whilst having one of his opening speeches about water and directly referencing the leak. This immediately let the audience know that they were in for a good time and that the show was going to be light hearted and entertaining.

One of my favourite moments from the show was Sadie Cook’s monologue about all of the different types of love. It was such an immersive moment that brought the audience in to her head. The lighting for that moment really helped create this illusion. The stage lit up into a soft rosy tinted spotlight on her. Everything else was a blur. The other two actors walked slowly around her whilst she spoke. It was a very compelling speech.

Over the duration of the show, I enjoyed the journey the characters went on, from waking up distorted and closed off from one another to then opening up and exploring who they were to each other. As the show continued it began to get a little darker and more mysterious, eventually seeing the characters begin to turn on each other. The ending was especially clever, finishing in with a cyclical slant, though with a lot of unanswered questions. It definitely left me wanting to know more, which is a good thing. However I find that on rating the show I struggle to award it higher as they weren’t necessarily questions I could find answers to and I would have preferred the show to give slightly more insight.

Reviewer: Rhiarna Hall