House of Cards writer Beau Willimon’s new play East Is South deals with the ethics and advancement of AI. But despite the transformative subject matter, Ellen McDougall’s production has as much propulsion as a car in reverse.
Skins actor Kaya Scodelario plays Lena, a former Mennonite and gifted coder, who is wrestling with the expanding consciousness of Logos, the software her company has developed. We meet her as she is preparing to be questioned by the workplace bigwigs who watch her from the upper level of Alex Eales’s two-tiered sciene-inspired set as if she is a caged animal. Lena and her lover, Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are being investigated after a security breach. For a fleeting second, the tension in McDougall’s direction is sky-high.
But, that’s as far as East Is South goes in terms of sparking anxiety. Willimon’s writing is weighty and thick. There are references to religion, love, abuse and deceit, and the play attempts to answer the big, complicated question of what makes something human. But the pace of the drama slows and sags.
Scodelario does her best with a soulless role and at one point she looks believably on the verge of tears. But the language of the play is peculiar. The romantic scenes between Lena and Sasha have no heat; the pair stand awkwardly beside each other as if they’re meeting for the first time. The interview scenes are void of any fire. If Willimon hoped to use his play to show AI as a potential threat to humanity, his scenes would need to have more fear sewn in.
The risks Logos presents are nothing new; we already know that AI’s power is multiplying by the day, and that if this continues, it could possibly become free-thinking. All the emotional and moral issues Willimon poses feel well-trodden and are laid out plainly in his script.
In 2025, there is an abundance of plays about technological advances, including the considerably more fascinating More Life over at the Royal Court. Next to such works East Is South seems unnecessary and uninspired. If you’re looking to be freshly frightened by AI’s perils in a drama, perhaps go to another theatre, elsewhere.
• At Hampstead theatre, London, until 15 March
