Thomas Gibbons's 'Uncanny Valley' at InterAct (second review)

Playwright Tom Gibbons is treading that path again here. He is the author of excellent dramas, such as Black Russian and Permanent Collection, but in Uncanny Valley Gibbons’s work is overly calculated. Just as his protagonist contrives to assemble an artificial person, so Gibbons puts together a series of unnatural scenes.

The setting is an office 35 years in the future. Claire, a highly educated and mature neuroscientist, is shown instructing a robot with lifelike polymer skin how to move its head and smile and, eventually, walk. We are given the impression that this is standard procedure in the world of tomorrow. Claire at first acts professionally, but soon she begins to treat the robot as if it were human — in fact, a male human. She even gives him the name Julian.

The robot, for no clear reason, asks Claire for details about her personal life. Stop and think: Do you press your doctor or your auto mechanic for information about his or her spouse and children? Claire, unprofessionally, tells the robot that her husband’s mind is slipping and that they have an adult daughter who has been estranged from them for many years.

Claire then informs Julian, hesitantly, that he is going to receive a DNA download and “consciousness file” from a rich old man who is dying of cancer. The donor has requested that the robot resemble the donor at age 44, which he thinks of as his prime. The machine is expected to survive for hundreds of years: Julian will be close to immortal.

What’s the problem?

Why is Claire anguished as she informs the robot, created with a specific face for a particular purpose, of this procedure? It is making excellent use of a machine, clearly a more beneficial function for a robot than putting it to work on an assembly line.

The download is done, and the original Julian dies. Only later do we learn that Claire was an employee of the superrich Julian, who paid $240 million for the procedure. The playwright thus suggests that there’s unfairness in the access that the wealthy have to health care (or to immortality). But we knew that already, and we are aware of other forms of discrimination in treating illnesses. If you are above a certain age, for example, you cannot receive a heart transplant. There’s nothing new here.

Claire suddenly decides that she’s created a monster. But why is the playwright stacking the deck against the actions that he has constructed? If Bill Gates and Warren Buffett could build robots and transfer all of their knowledge into them, why would we deny them (and us) that possibility? With the technology illustrated here, it’s true that evil people could perpetuate their existences, but the justice system can still deal with whatever evil they do.

Family dynamics

In Act II, Gibbons reveals that Julian’s 35-year-old son opposed the plan when his father told him about it. He was horrified that his old man would now be only a decade older than he was. But if my dying 88-year-old father had the opportunity to transfer his knowledge and his feelings into a new, younger body, I would have been thrilled. And I’d love to have him around today as a companion. I just asked my 21-year-old son how he’d feel if I chose to be close to his age. He said it would be cool.

For my family, at least, the premise of the play is seriously flawed.

Late in the drama, Claire receives a phone call from her long-lost daughter. Julian has located her and arranged the reunion. As a parent, I’d be thankful that he did so. But Claire is angry that Julian has meddled in her life (disregarding the fact that Claire herself told him about her family problem). The script has become so contrary to human nature that it’s annoying. A further problem is that the playwright raises a major issue of the rupture between Claire and her daughter and then never reveals anything about the cause or the outcome. The relationship receives no resolution.

Frank X as Julian and Sally Mercer as Claire do great work with the material they’ve been given — Frank’s metamorphosis is especially spectacular — and Seth Rozin’s direction is crisp. But the play leaves us wanting so much more than it delivers.

For Robert Zaller’s review, click here.