the drama has a robot protagonist at its centre, played by Jacob Erftemeijer, who travels through nonsequitur scenes with the air of a glazed, modern-day Frankenstein, wearing the platform shoes of a classic zombie. His master, Viktor (just as in Mary Shelley’s story), has died and he must contend with the human race alone. He meets mostly sultry, suggestive women who moan, gyrate, and throw themselves at his feet. It is strangely reminiscent of a middle-aged male fantasy, but with clunkier chat-up lines. “I wish my binary self had a body like that,” he says to one woman. He tells her she has lips like “warm honey” and says: “I’ll make love to you all over your body.” Another scene features the robot with a man who drops his trousers and tells him, antagonistically: “You’ve got a finger in my butt.” They stand facing each other on an almost bare set and the scenario has touches of Beckett, in its starkness, and Pinter too, in its unspoken power battle. But the dialogue ends up repeating itself and just sounding absurd.
Questions on life, companionship and mortality are voiced but they seem like emotionless musings with no sense of drama, depth or story, and the robot moves on from one surreal scene to the next, as if in a bad dream.
In a drama written by artificial intelligence, the computer’s imagination touches on themes of love and loneliness – but is mostly obsessed with sex
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