Aionos
Aboard the Aionos Space Station, the gods play with the mortals on the Earth below, quite literally, the god of the underworld Anubis broadcasting her show Trials of Anubis seeking to grow her audience and searching for new participants to experience the virtual reality world she has created, assisted by Azizi, Thoth and her father Set, respectively the gods of the stars, of science and of chaos and war.
Their initial elderly subject having been unlikely to provide the needed boost, instead they look to a younger demographic, Set tricking them into volunteering and dropping them into a simulation of Ancient Egypt where he will guide them through tombs and into battle with the fearsome chimera Ammit, guardian of the Book of the Dead, perhaps not a threat to an immortal but certainly to those for whom the gods should be responsible.
That Aionos is an ambitious multimedia theatrical concept is undeniable, pitched as “an African-Futurist mixed-reality production where Ancient Egypt meets Star Wars,” created by Debbie Deer and Ari Tarr with casts performing simultaneously in a linkup between Edinburgh where Shaharah Gaznabbi, Lawrencia Effiah, Dave Harack and Milton Lopez Marhemberg portray the gods and Toronto where another group perform the motion capture of the virtual characters.
A concept is one thing; to progress it to a point where it is ready to be presented to an audience and execute it effectively live on stage is quite another, and this is where Aionos crashes out of its decaying orbit, with an inexperienced cast who are under-rehearsed and struggle with their lines, incapable of improvising and lost when a show conceived around technology encounters the inevitable issues inherent in such a reliance.
The onscreen presentation stilted, lagging and resembling nothing so much as an Egyptian skin dropped on a first generation of The Sims, would Aionos be a better show were it to overcome these difficulties, perhaps by having the live actors play against a prerecorded backdrop? Potentially yes, but unfortunately, on the basis of this performance it is unlikely, shifting rather than addressing the problem, the premise fundamentally one which involves watching other people struggling to play a children’s game, at best a show which might appeal to children but not one which warrants attention at this poor stage of development.
Aionos runs at Zoo Playground until Sunday 27th August
