Gasda’s AI play satirises the elite, but does little to challenge them
I went into Monday night’s performance of Doomers with a somewhat limited understanding of AI, hoping that Matthew Gasda’s new play would shed some light on the new tech industry that seems to be holding every other industry at gunpoint whilst simultaneously producing nothing but misinformation and dissociative slop. Played out in two distinct acts, each with their own casts, Doomers is a piece akin to kitchen sink realism, taking inspiration from the real life events of the attempted outsting of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2023. It is a solitary window into the world of capitalist elites, making it a limited insight into what is actually going on up there in Silicon Valley. Shrouded in tech/business jargon and philosophic language, the play does not seek to demystify this industry for the audience, but play it out rather plainly, expecting us to get it.
It does this with Gasda’s incredibly tight dialogue, with some excellent one liners. “If you believe in God, you have nothing to worry about.” spits Seth, a presumed stand-in for Altman, played by Sam Hyrkin. Hyrkin’s performance is thoroughly detestable and, more importantly, believable. There has, after all, been enough footage of narcissistic tech bros circulating our media in recent years to study for such a character, and Hyrkin plays Seth impeccably. This particular piece of vitriol is spat at Alina, played by Neetika Knight, potentially the most grounding character in the play, with a performance by Knight that stood out in particular. Knight plays Alina with a blunt insistence, whose constant challenging never becomes tiring, appearing incredibly genuine. Alina’s angry concern contains an underlayer of dread, making it a convincing depiction of a sentiment many people have expressed about AI. Amy Brangwyn also plays an excellent rendition of Myra, the mediator of this dining table argument.
In Act two, we are in the board room of the investors, with a whole new cast of characters. By this point, the play is slightly more legible, which allowed for the characters to be enjoyed more thoroughly. In particular, James Holmes as Richard was a wonderful presence on stage, with a kind of campness only obscene wealth can buy. Paddy Echlin also played Eli with a meticulous irate sense about him, giving an honest impression of the character’s unique way of thinking. Mei, played by Yuii Minari, perhaps felt the most out of place character here. This is in no part due to Minari’s acting ability, but rather the way in which the character was written. As the flagship ‘Gen Z’ character, her portrayal felt a little hamfisted, with the Pinkpantheress song and generation specific references not coming off particularly authentic for the moment. She feels like a caricature of the aforementioned generation, rather than a character in her own right.
Zsuzsa Magyar’s direction is otherwise very successful. Considering the play can feel, tonally, like one argument played twice, Magyar’s iteration makes it feel at least constantly moving. The traverse staging was also a very good theatrical choice, assisted by a very impressive set. For what it’s worth, this is what the show felt like for its duration—very impressive. It was as though even the show was aware of this itself. But there was a moment, as I struggled to understand the events happening in the first act, where I looked around me and realised this play was not made for people like me. It’s one thing to gesture to the crazy rich elites and point out their absurdities—there are plenty of stories doing exactly this—but it’s another to critique them. With little to add other than this satirical gesture, Doomers feels like a script proving its ability to write elites to the elites. It proves little to the rest of us whose lives, as Alina suggests, are tangibly on the line with the reckless acceleration of AI technology.