Review Roundup: MORE LIFE Opens at Royal Court Theatre

Royal Court Theatre is presenting Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman's More Life. The cast includes Marc Elliott, Alison Halstead, Lewis Mackinnon, Tim McMullan, Danusia Samal and Helen Schlesinger. The director is James Yeatman and text and dramaturgy is by Lauren Mooney.

More Life is designed by Shankho Chaudhuri with lighting design by Ryan Joseph Stafford. The composer & sound designer is Zac Gvirtzman, the co-sound designer is Dan Balfour and the costume supervisor is Isobel Pellow. 

‘Imagine yourself as a file on a computer: That's you. That's what you are now.'  A woman wakes up in 2075, in a body that is not her own. 

Fifty years ago, Bridget died in a car accident. Now, thanks to a technological breakthrough, she is back: her mind, her consciousness, in a synthetic body. Metal. Wires. But she's still Bridget, isn't she? She must be. 

This sci-fi gothic horror, by Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman, is set in a future where pain and death are going rapidly out of date. More Life is a thrilling exploration of what it means to be human. They say the first person to live forever has already been born. This is the world they are making for us. See what the critics are saying...

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Alexander Cohen, BroadwayWorld: Alison Halstead echoes that sense of haunting as the android Bridget . Her stiff movements conjure an uncanny serenity, as if her brain and body are not quite intertwined. But her piercing gaze is a window to her soul beneath. A vision of the past Bridget, as she was when she died, occasionally lingers behind her, the ghost in the machine yearning to break free. It’s all the more heart wrenching opposite Tim McMullan’s searingly endearing Harry, earnestly desperate to navigate the situation’s terrifying weirdness.

Kate Wyver, The Guardian: Most of Kandinsky’s work began at New Diorama under David Byrne, now artistic director of the Royal Court. More Life is a bright indication of the vision he brings with him. The pace drops in the second half, but there’s so much to engage with. Beyond intellectual and ethical debates, this play stabs at the heart. Tim McMullan roils as Bridget’s husband, unable to cope with the shock of her return. He gazes at her as one would an old videotape. Helen Schlesinger is softly stern as his second wife, host to this uncomfortable reckoning and aching for her own eternity.

Matt Wolf, London Theatre: Danusia Samal is both plaintive and pointed as Ghost Bridget, who manages despite her name to feel in every way present, and Marc Elliott and Lewis Mackinnon complete an ace ensemble. They are joint witnesses – architects, even – of what in some circles might be seen as advances and in others as a cry from the futuristic frontline that keeps a spectator wanting more right up to this galvanising play's richly satisfying end.

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out: But it is, ultimately, compelling, not least thanks to Halstead’s soulful, troubled performance as a woman – or perhaps a copy of a woman – who finds herself torn between the twin temptations of oblivion and eternity. Sometimes More Life feels embarrassed to be asking the big questions about the future of the human species. But this is when it’s at its most powerful.

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