Thomas Gibbons's 'Uncanny Valley' at InterAct (1st review)

Gibbons’s antihero, if the word may be used, is also named Julian. He is not, however, a man about town, but a new-generation experiment in Artificial Intelligence, whose body — supple, lifelike-looking polymers and sophisticated internal computers — is meant to house the brain contents, personality, and life experience of a fabulously rich corporate tycoon who is rapidly fading from cancer.

Julian the Android must first be programmed to mimic human responses and behaviors, most importantly the experience of consciousness. His teacher is Claire, a scientist who sees in such replicas a means to achieve the most elusive of all human dreams: immortality.

But Julian is not merely a platform; as he comes to experience his own subjectivity, we must consider whether his bonding with Claire (which he will not be programmed to forget) does not in some sense actually humanize him. Indeed, his planned conversion to a vehicle for the “real” Julian is something that must be concealed from him until he is fully prepared to receive the latter’s mental deposits.

Do the math

He must, in short, acquire a certain personality of his own. He will naturally experience the imposition of another self as a kind of usurpation, not to say betrayal, although his self-consciousness — rather like a pliant child’s — yields without resistance. He manages to compute this as a simple equation: There is a Julian A, to which will be added a Julian B, which will result, presumably, in a Julian C — two split personalities perhaps constituting a third.

Frank X, who plays the first two Julians — Julian C never does appear — is the android with a learning curve throughout Act I. X has played Lear and Othello, but those roles seem far less demanding than Julian A, who must come to life bit by bit before our eyes. It is a tour de force of acting, made both simpler and more difficult by the fact that X has, even in perfect repose, one of the most naturally expressive faces on the Philadelphia stage. As Julian awaits the dawning of human expression on his face (how to smile, how to laugh, how even to get accustomed to eyes that blink without need), X conveys a primordial wonderment and delight in taking on the lineaments of his visage, a new Adam adjusting to his Eden. Can Julian A actually be an improved version of the human?

Pleasure and power

The question is slippery, for human personality is in fact an evolutionary product millions of years in the making. This product is tied to organic hungers and processes no android can experience: For instance, since Julian B must actually function as a younger version of himself, sexual pleasure can be given, but not — yet — felt. In the event, Julian B’s edited (and partly redacted) personality is designed to give him full command of his commercial empire in a fail-safe body; that command will come with vastly more power, since he will not age or weaken. The problem he encounters is a grown son, who has no intention of being cheated out of his inheritance, and goes to court to challenge Julian B’s legal personhood. But Julian hasn’t gotten where he is by playing by the rules, even those of biology, and no mere offspring is going to stand in his way.

Claire, too, has family problems: Her husband is succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and her daughter — about the age of Julian’s son — hasn’t spoken to either of her parents in years, for reasons neither can fathom. This gives our Julian B a bright idea about killing two birds with one stone, though it is now his turn to keep secrets as it once had been Claire’s. The action of the second act turns on these complications.

Battling monsters

Julian B, we soon come to realize, is a monster. We realize, too, that immortality, like space rides with Richard Branson, will be only for the very wealthy — Julian’s custom job, he informs us with a touch of pride, is a cool $240 mil. Claire, appalled, realizes that she will have to fight Julian, or at least fight clear of him, but the results of that battle are even easier to foresee.

Uncanny Valley is, obviously, a play of ideas that relies structurally on the device of turning the tables. Politically, it envisions a new dystopian society: The future is not us, but them, the elites who, by their control of science and technology, will redesign themselves (and ultimately everyone else) to their specifications.

As for the Claires of this world — scientists who mask their own will to power behind a desire to “improve” humanity — they are more easily bought by vanity than money and will not worry overmuch about the Frankensteins they create. Gibbons’s Claire (Sally Mercer) is humanly sympathetic to us — the play would be intolerable otherwise — but, as Uncanny Valley suggests, the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions, but largely consists of them.

Kudos to Seth Rozin’s direction, and Nick Embree’s spare, functional set. As for the moral of the story: If this is the future, let’s start preventing it, quick.

For Steve Cohen's review, click here.