A woman is urgently summoned to New Mexico after a dead body is found in Taos, a desert town. Sam (Gemma Lawrence) confirms it is her mother, Kath (Eve Ponsonby), only to discover that Kath still exists – or one version of her – as a cyborg in whom her mother imprinted a lifetime’s memories before her own death.
Is Kath immortal now? Is she even alive, to some degree? Or is this a story of financial manipulation in which Kath has been persuaded to leave all her millions to a “future life” company promising eternal, virtual existence?
David Farr’s unusual and inquiring play, directed by Rachel Bagshaw and produced by Fuel, becomes an existential mystery exploring what constitutes humanness and how we can be truly free.
The spiritual associations of the desert become clearer as these questions are unleashed; Taos is a liminal space where concepts of life and death collide. Kath arrives there after an emotional breakdown, finding it to be “the quietest place on earth”. She seems like a modern-day Desert Father in her quest for freedom, and life beyond death.
Ti Green’s set design gives the drama a spatial layering that brings clarity to the story’s past-present structure: a frame for the virtual reality sections, and distinct platforms for the various phases in Kath’s life, along with deft scene changes using video, designed by Sarah Readman, and sound, by Ben and Max Ringham. A back-screen shows digital images of Kath’s younger self, combined with smears of colour and shapes (she was once an art student). The debt to film-maker Adam Curtis is clear in these optics, though a character is also named Curtis Adam and the playwright gives thanks to Curtis in his acknowledgments.
Some actors play double versions of their characters, including Ponsonby (physical and intense) as well as David Burnett as her university lover, Leo. The cast are compelling across the board, including Lawrence, who emanates grief complicated by resentment at all the ways her mother failed her. Flawed love is an underlying theme: Kath is drawn to the cult-like foundation promising eternal digital life in hope of being given a second chance at parental (as well as romantic) love, which bears a resemblance to Caryl Churchill’s A Number.
Questions on what constitutes the human essence remain unanswered, and it is better this way. The issue of whether the cyborg Kath is showing signs of humanity cannot be dismissed outright; it becomes another of this play’s intriguing mysteries.
• Until 12 November. Then touring.
