More Life is an exceptional and bold production, taking an ambitious and complex story and realising it expertly on stage.
The play takes us inside the research lab of Edius, who are trying to upload the consciousness of dead people back into new, robotic bodies. After many failed attempts, Bridget is uploaded, and the promising signs she displays lead Victor (Marc Elliott) into a spiralling obsession with making her ‘work’, no matter her suffering and despite the objections of his lab assistant, Mike (Lewis Mackinnon). This torment leads Bridget (Alison Halstead) to break free of her captivity, running to the only place she can, the house of her former husband, Harry (Tim McMullan), and his wife Davina (Helen Schlesinger). Through this, the play explores the ethics of this search for ‘more life’, and the difficult question of whether Bridget is really alive again, with the character played both by Halstead and by Danusia Samal as ‘Ghost Bridget’.
Co-creators Laura Mooney and James Yateman have produced an excellently written, and incredibly funny play. A particular strength of their script is that it never loses sight of the personal story on stage. With cerebral shows, there is always the danger that at some point the story stops, and the characters start to say whatever the writers need them to say to make a point. Mooney and Yateman never make this mistake. Even where the script probes wider questions, it is always with the character of Bridget at its heart. This prevents an ambitious plot from going off the rails, and delivers some incredibly touching moments.
Shankho Chaudhuri’s set design is simple, but well placed. The back wall is reminiscent of an anechoic chamber, or AI-generated Ikea shelves, giving a cold feeling to the set. This works especially well as the extravagant but not-so-welcoming home of Harry and Davina. This set is matched by a fantastic lighting design by Ryan Joseph Stafford, who mixes arresting sequences with moments of blackout and softer, subtler lighting to capture the two warring states of play: the human and the machine.
Perhaps the best feature of the staging is its use of microphones. They allow the cast to slip into chorus roles seamlessly and, most effectively, allow the voices of the ‘uploaded’ to be separated from the body they occupy. In this way, the text’s central problem of the divorce between the mind and the body is realised powerfully on stage. These microphones are part of an excellent sound design by Dan Balfour and Zac Gvirtzman, which utilises recorded and live human voices to create eerie soundscapes. The effect of this is to land us in an uncanny valley, where the sounds we hear are so human and yet distorted beyond comfortable recognition.
The work of the creative team is made to fly by a wonderful cast. In particular, Tim McMullan is phenomenal as Harry. He is supremely funny when playing up the character’s bumbly, indecisive nature, which makes the darker aspects of his character all the more chilling. Likewise, Alison Halstead shines in a difficult role, playing the ‘robot’ into whom many different minds, including Bridget, are uploaded. Initially stiff in her physicality, as Bridget struggles to adapt to her new, non-human body, she finds a striking humanity in the character, again landing us in that uncanny valley that is this show’s sweet spot.
This is a production with very few flaws. Occasionally, the pacing doesn’t feel razor-sharp, but the clever use of chorus work means that it never truly drags. The only real loss this creates is that some interesting ideas, like hints at a catastrophic societal breakdown prior to the play’s events, are left slightly underexplored. This said, there is only one moment that actually misfires – a slightly odd rendition of David Byrne’s Glass, Concrete & Stone. The themes make sense, but it jars, and not quite in the right way.
Above all, however, this is a hugely enjoyable, and thought provoking show that once again cements The Royal Court as the place for bold and creative new work. Go, sit close, and enjoy it.
More life is running until the 8th of March – https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/more-life/
Reviewer: Ralph Jeffreys
Reviewed: 12th February 2025
North West End UK Rating:
Rating: 4 out of 5.
