24/08/26

Pleasance Dome (Jack Dome), Edinburgh

I’m initially drawn to Joe Sellman-Leava’s show because it promises to tackle the thorny topic of AI and, as an author and therefore somebody who sees it as perhaps the most dangerous invention of the 21st century, I’m keen to learn more.

And yes, it does handle the subject, but in a frustratingly roundabout way.

We find our narrator seated at a desk in front of a laptop, surrounded by heaps of discarded paper. An overhead projector allows him to display the different images he sets out on his (non-virtual) desktop. He proudly shows us a sketch book from his schooldays, which features caricatures of the teachers who guided him through his academic years. One in particular, it turns out, was an inspiration to him – and a section of the show will be all about Mr Swift.

Then Sellman-Leava does some impersonations – good ones as it turns out. His Ed Miliband is right on the nose. Just as I’m settling into that, he impersonates Big Arnie before segueing into selected excerpts from Lord of the Rings. It starts to become clear that Copycat is made up from a lot of disparate threads.

When we eventually get to the AI stuff, it is absolutely terrifying – the point that our National Health Service’s computer system has been outsourced to Palantir – an AI company often accused of ‘techno-fascism’ – is a particularly chilling premise. Sellman-Leava points out that we are all turkeys voting for Christmas, a conclusion with which I heartily concur. But then once again, we’re heading off in a different direction to revisit Sellman-Leava’s end-of-term show, in which he is obliged to impersonate the aforementioned Mr Swift.

Sellman-Leava is a talented and confident performer for sure, his warm, friendly demeanour connecting with his audience – but when he gets to the extended sequence where the presentation collapses into a confusing blare of random voices, augmented by impressive sound and lighting effects, I find myself thinking how much more effective this would be if the framework of the story were more straightforward.

There’s plenty of interesting content here but, in this form, they’re all fighting each other for dominance – and there’s no clear winner. Nonetheless, it does raise some vital points – and asks important questions..

3 stars

Philip Caveney