By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: *** RUNTIME: 125 minutes (including a 15-minute interval)

WHEN?: Saturday 8 July, opens Thursday 13 July runs through 5 August 2023 (public ticket)

The rise of Artifical Intelligence has fuelled fears that it could wipe out humanity or, at the very least, threaten our jobs and so AI as a topic for theatre couldn’t be more now.

• Read on for reasons including how we would have liked to have seen more of Nathaniel Curtis’ character

Oliver Alvin Wilson’s (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Young Vic) Nick is the American tech disruptor of the show’s title who has discovered an algorithm that he claims knows people better than they know themselves and wants his friends to invest in it.

We’re here because we loved Nathaniel Curtis in Channel 4’s monsta-winning It’s A Sin and we’re disappointed that his character Ben, a married friend of Nick’s, doesn’t have a more central role.

Nick begins to demonstrate the algorithm’s worth by presenting its power to his friends.

He tells reformed wild child Paul, colourfully and memorably played by Nick Read, that the algorithm realises he no longer wants to be married. AI knows Curtis’ affable Ben is financing a real-life rent boy.

Debbie Korley’s Suzie has some sharp observations but 1 of our problems with Disruption was that we found ourselves without a likeable character to empathise with. Why was it set in America for a start when it really didn’t have to be?

Some of the lines were funny and underlined the serious implications of the subject matter but also how offputting it was including: ‘We are the Uber of assholes’ and ‘No-one seems to have noticed that Big Bird is wearing a hoodie.’

There is a great play to be written about AI – hopefully by a human – and here Disruption grasps at the big questions that could be asked by it and answered in some way by technology: ‘Should I stay married? Have a kid? Stuff like that.’

But the warmth and humanity that Stein grasps for in his programme notes weren’t quite on the page: ‘Personally, I’m a fan of smarter, better, faster, especially if it’s served with a healthy dose of humanity. But when humanity is in second position to servicing the God of Disruption, I start to worry.’

So, Disruption is not, as we were hoping, 1 of the best new plays of the year but hopefully it’s the start of a conversation that theatre needs to have about the potential of AI and the beginning of an argument that humanity needs to have both skin in the game for – and to win.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Park Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a show at the Park Theatre or starring Nathaniel Curtis? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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