83. Review of UNCANNY VALLEY (October 7, 2014)

83. UNCANNY VALLEY

 

 

 

One thing I guarantee about Thomas Gibbons’s UNCANNY VALLEY at 59E59 Theaters is that, if you see it with a friend, you’re going to want to talk about it when you leave. And, while the production is excellent, you’ll be even more intrigued by the subject matter, the use of scientific research and technology to create a robot so humanlike you’d have a hard time telling the difference. UNCANNY VALLEY is making its local premiere after first being seen at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in West Virginia.

Alex Podulke, Barbara Kingsley. Photo: Seth Freeman.

Of course, the play, which has overtones of the Frankenstein’s monster story (there’s even a self-reflexive crack about “the villagers . . . gathering with torches and pitchforks”), owes a debt to Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (1922), which gave the world the word “robot,” and to all those films—too many to mention—in which artificial intelligence plays a crucial part, including PROMETHEUS (2012). In fact, Michael Fassbender’s performance as the robot David in that movie suggests a precedent for that of Alex Podulke, who plays the robot Julian in UNCANNY VALLEY.

Alex Podulke, Barbara Kingsley. Photo: Seth Fre

The subject is very hot right now, and there’s even another play of the same title playing at the Brick Theatre in Williamsburg from October 9-18; it’s unlikely that the stage and screen are going to stop finding ways to keep the cyborgs coming. The reason for the similarity in titles is because “uncanny valley” is a familiar term within the field of artificial intelligence. It refers to the quantifiable discomfort felt by people when confronted by androids whose appearance and behavior, no matter how close they are to seeming human, are not fully lifelike. 

Mr. Gibbons’s 90-minute one-act, smoothly staged by Tom Dugdale, is a two hander set in the office of Claire (Barbara Kingsley), a septuagenarian neuroscientist in a life-extension lab, who’s been training Julian to behave like a human being. When we first see him he’s just a head on a desk, learning facial expressions. Next we see the head on an armless torso, then with an arm attached, after which another arm is attached. Finally, he gets legs and wanders about the office with awkward deliberation, testing out his new accessories. As Julian slowly takes on all the physical attributes of a living man, he and Claire engage in a series of fascinating discussions about the process of becoming human.

All this leads to the revelation that Julian’s purpose is to provide a simulacrum of a billionaire with the same name, who’s dying of cancer and who’s spent $340 million to have Julian created so that his memories and personality can be downloaded into the robot, allowing him to continue running the late billionaire’s huge business and enjoying life. You may ask: is this really immortality (or something like it)? How the dead billionaire can appreciate this afterlife is never addressed.

The play is set in “the not too distant future,” and we’re told that 19 other such robots are being developed elsewhere. When the story breaks, and people (actual ones, that is) begin to express discomfort with the presence of robots so real they can pass for human, the possibility of advocating for robots’ rights is broached, just as it was in a satirical segment on "The Colbert Report"; its talking head is a sibling of the one in UNCANNY VALLEY. 

Despite the occasional laugh lines, UNCANNY VALLEY is a thoughtful, serious play. In its eighth and final scene, the previously clumsy robot enters, smartly dressed, a lock of his previously pasted down hair hanging casually, and his movements graceful and comfortable, albeit with a perfectly modulated hint of the control necessary to make them seem that way. Julian is having a major crisis with “his” son Paul, from whom the late billionaire was alienated; Paul is contesting Julian’s continuing to be the head of the family business, since he’s a robot, not a human, and Julian wants Claire to testify on his behalf in court. But Julian goes too far with regard to his interference in Claire’s personal life, and the play moves into mildly melodramatic territory.

Nevertheless, the sudden conflict serves to illuminate some of the potential moral, ethical, and legal issues that robots like Julian are likely to precipitate, if they ever get to where they’re as convincing as Julian. In fact, Julian, for all his being little more than wiring and algorithms, is constantly evolving. He even looks forward to not only being able to pleasure a sex partner, but to feeling sexual stimulation himself.

When you enter Theater B at 59E59 you notice that scene designer Jesse Dreikosen has hidden his set behind a crinkly white curtain on which a live TV image of the audience is projected. You may, perhaps, spend the preshow minutes pretending that you’re not looking at yourself. Later, a huge image of Julian’s eerily smiling face, eyes staring directly at you, fills the curtain’s expanse. (Video design is by Michael McKowen.) The windowless office, wooden floor and all, with opaque glass walls upstage, and a wall of shelves bearing Claire’s artifacts (including an earlier robot’s head), sets the right tone. Therese Bruck’s costumes and John Ambrosone’s lighting do their work unobtrusively and well. A marvelous sound design by Elisheba Ittoop offers just the right tone of strangeness to the atmosphere.

Barbara Kingsley, a petite, sylphlike, grandmotherly actress, plays Claire with the proper balance of friendliness, acumen, and sensitivity, especially when her personal life—involving a husband with dementia and a daughter who abandoned her—is involved. Like Fassbender, Alex Podulke has the kind of handsome, clean-lined, generalized features that make him seem both natural and unnatural when Julian speaks in his soft-edged, precisely articulated voice, and produces his programmed facial expressions and bodily movements. Even when he morphs into a believable human toward the end, he never quite loses that mildly unnerving quality that makes you wonder what’s really ticking inside.