Review: EAST IS SOUTH, Hampstead Theatre

AI and ChatGPT are yesterday’s news but artificial general intelligence - and the very existential threat it presents - may very well be tomorrow’s.

Beau Willimon’s East Is South takes as its starting point the idea that a powerful AGI called Logos built by the US government has potentially been let loose on the internet. Its two lead developers Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are prime suspects in aiding and abetting the AGI’s attempted escape from its confines deep below a desert. Their supervisor Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis channelling Jurassic Park-era Jeff Goldblum) and NSA agents Samira Darvish (Natalie Armin) and Olsen (Alec Newman) try to get to the bottom of what happened.

The emergence of AGI - an evolutionary step that could see AI step up to human levels of reasoning - is a hot topic filled with even hotter air: most experts believe that it will take decades if it's possible at all while OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it could be here sometime this year and Elon Musk has suggested that it will arrive in 2026. It’s a shame then that something so important to humanity is treated more as a nerdy McGuffin in place of earnest and extended theological and philosophical discussions.

It doesn’t help that the first third sees exposition thrown out like confetti and the second is weighed down by the backstories of Lena and Sasha. As an escapee from a fundamentalist Christian community, Lena has a natural sympathy for the machine intelligence she and Sasha call “Aggy”. Her colleague - and recent lover - has his own reasons (also related to his past) and his own agenda as they ostensibly work together on Aggy’s kill switch. As both are interrogated, first by the crafty Darvish then by the brutal Olsen, more layers and secrets are revealed. Deep questions like “did God create the universe or is its purpose to create God?” are thrown up and discussed before moving on to the next intellectual quandary. 

Willimon has award nominations for his work on the first four seasons of Netflix’s adaptation of the BBC series House of Cards and his contributions to the laudable Andor. It’s a mystery then why, as someone who knows full well what a taut thriller looks like, he has written a play that fails to keep us engaged with either its premise or its characters. Director Ellen McDougall does the best she can to maintain a tense bunker-like atmosphere even if she has to lean heavily on the exemplary lighting from Azusa Ono and Colin Stetson’s musical composition.

It doesn’t help that almost all of the actors are asked to labour under thick American accents; Treadaway has the additional burden of trying to carry off Russian undertones too in order to reflect Sasha’s birthplace. As Abrams comes from New Zealand, Curtis gets to keep his own rich brogue. Along the line, he infuses Kiwi language and traditions into the dialogue and a moving finale.

Perhaps not by coincidence, he comes off as the most authentic, complex and genuinely interesting character, a pessimistic sceptic who knows his Plato’s Cave from his mathematical algorithms. No small amount of research and thought has gone into this play and, in a work not short on lengthy speeches, it is only when Curtis gives his own stirring epic ramble that East Is South’s intellectual underpinnings make any kind of impression.

The frequent switches from present to past and back again are distracting but not heavy-handed. The moral debates and techy jargon can mean scenes are on the wordy side but they never stoop to a  Stoppard level of navel-gazing esotericism. There are times when helpful dialogue or character scenes seem to have been shortened or excised (Aaron Gill as the technician gets very little to say until almost the end) so maybe East Is South could be the seed from which a worthy TV show will emerge. If it does return to the stage, it could do with more verbal sharpness and should make more of an effort to tackle its supposed subject.

East Is South continues at Hampstead Theatre until 15 March.

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