Assisted
Jordan and Connie are torn; do they commit themselves to a child, a new life brought into the world, or do they instead embrace Alivia, the artificial intelligence voice assistant which Jordan has installed in their home to supposedly make their lives easier, monitoring their conversations, observing and adapting to their behaviour, pre-empting their shopping habits and indulging their quirks.
Written by Greg Wilkinson and starring Matt Vickery and Emma Wilkinson-Wright, Assisted is billed as science fiction but there are no great leaps of imagination or technology, Alivia only marginally more advanced than gadgets currently available and certainly not beyond conceivable developments in the immediate future and Jordan and Connie initially points of view rather than characters them leaping directly to dysfunction.
Instead, the focus is on the crumbling relationship of Jordan and Connie, he controlling and belittling, speaking to Connie as though he were a bad manager dealing with underperforming staff, she initially reticent about the invasion of their privacy Alivia represents but coming to see her as her only friend and confidante since she apparently knows nobody else.
Assisted about patterns of behaviour, Jordan says they both need to change but means Connie while Alivia follows along in their heavy footsteps, the science fiction element almost irrelevant; a self-help book or a friend on the telephone would serve almost exactly the same purpose and the plot would remain the same, a prop for the play to lean on as much as Connie leans on alcohol.
The structure frustrating with endless blackouts and musical cues to signify the emotion the audience are expected to feel, of the two performers Wilkinson-Wright comes across better in that Connie at least has a journey, Vickery given the graceless role of Jordan who has no time for others, only his own bottomless needs, a selfish and tiresome individual who might be more believable if written with more facets or if he didn’t spend the whole play in his pyjamas.
Assisted runs at theSpace at Surgeons Hall until Saturday 27th August
