Robota review – machines on the march in next-gen version of sci-fi classic

Headlong's take on Karel Čapek's 1920 tale of romance and robots is rife with timely debates about tech's threat but at times the philosophical discussions drag on I f our world is currently thinking through the brave new future of generative AI and super intelligence, Karel Čapek's 1920 play RUR: Rossum's Universal Robots proves the notion of robot consciousness and rebellion is not a new anxiety. So does Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which Čapek's drama resembles in its philosophical debates and moral warnings, despite its futurism. Ella Road adapts Čapek's play for our times in this Headlong and Schwarzman Centre co-production, its science apparently informed by research from Oxford University academics, which gives it a cutting-edge, real-world underpinning. The stage is presented as the operations office for the company, also named RUR, which is creating humanoids by mixing human flesh and blood with code and data at its headquarters on an island (a lovely, lush foliage and scaffold design by Loren Elstein). Dom (Trevor Fox) is the company's boss - a "dom" in more ways than one as he is having a Secretary-style, S&M romance with his robot personal assistant, Sulla (Tiffany Gray).