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Universal Robots
nytheatre.com review
Lucile Scott · February 13, 2009
Mac Rogers's Universal Robots at Manhattan Theatre Source distills lofty philosophical ideas about revolution, power, love, art, productivity, and other fundamental elements of humanity into a gripping, epic tale about robots and an alternative history that they define. The play is based on Czech playwright Karel Capek's 1921 play R.U.R., which first coined the word robot. The play opens just after World War I, when Capek was writing, but soon trudges ahead into its own territory that includes Nazis, World War II, and beyond.
The play opens at a Friday Night Circle where several of Prague's leading artists and intellectuals, including Karel Capek and his sister and writing partner Josephine, banter about politics, communism, and art. The duo plans out a new play titled "The Drudges," in which a pill makes half of humanity productive hard workers without a spark of creativity, leaving the other half free to become artists who can live only for dreams, beauty, and inquisitiveness. But before the siblings can finish toasting their artistic achievement a real robot lands on their doorstep and Capek must decide if art or action has more value and how he can really affect the history and progress of the country he loves. This leads us to Act II, in which robots become part of every home, allowing the play to address not only how technology changes daily life, but also how it affects combat and causes arms races. And it also of course looks at how a technology built to be superior to its master in many ways may not always do as it is told.
The well-directed (by Rosemary Andress) ensemble cast slides smoothly from character to character and from scene to scene, whether a play within a play, a café, or a mad scientist's basement. Standouts among them are Jennifer Gordon Thomas as Josephine, who, with a commanding and reserved coyness, develops from someone living in her brother's shadow into a heartbroken and world-weary woman trying to hold onto the old ideals and world her brother seems to have forgotten, and Jason Howard as Radius, the first robot, who maintains a touching dignity as he speaks with a robotic cadence and genuine simple-heartedness.
At its core the play is about what it is to be human and the nature of humanity is not an easy thing to take on. Rogers definitely comes out on top and deftly weaves his complicated tale, but while exploring ideas about the heart, the play often stays in the realm of the head and the characters' loves, arcs, falling-outs, and struggles are often explained more than shown to us, meaning some of the plot twists lack the emotional impact they could have if we connected more with the characters. The moment that most poignantly paints the moral quandaries of life with human-looking robots and the murky terrain of the human heart they lack comes in a small, simple aside. Periodically, members of the ensemble report back about the robots' effectiveness in letters to the manufacturer, thereby explaining to us their impact on culture and the world. In one such aside a man asks for a robot the size of a small boy, with soft skin, explaining his horrifying and heartbreaking rationale.
But before long a new war and revolution have overtaken daily concerns and everyone is hurled down a path where humans and robots are forced to re-examine themselves, their assumptions, and their roles in the world, before the play wraps up in a surprising end that is anything but robotic.
This page updated Saturday, November 21, 2009 12:10 AM
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