Robots Vs Art

Overview

I imagine that Travis Cotton, the writer and director of Robots Vs Art, was watching Arnie curl his fingers into a gloriously corny thumbs-up towards the conclusion of Terminator 2 when he decided that the notion of robots being able to feel and emote needed to be revisited with more meta, and that that decision resulted in the creation of his incredibly entertaining play.

Robots Vs Art is set in a dystopian (or utopian, depending on your stance) future where humans have been eradicated by their humanoid creations and sent to work in mines to source energy for the now-sustainable world the robot overlords rule. However, fate intervenes for Giles (Daniel Fredriksen) — the last human alive — when Master Executive Bot (Simon Maiden) charges him with the task of making robots feel through the final frontier they are yet to conquer, art.

What ensues is one of the funniest plays I have seen in some time. It is littered with brilliant one-liners — "wanker detected" will bring a smile to my face for the foreseeable future — and expertly written jokes about the theatre industry that Mr and Mrs Normal Viewer can also enjoy. The didactic dictionary-defined nature of the robots also provides some side-splitting moments.

However, it is the physical humour of Clawbot (Paul Goddard) that steals the show. Goddard is magnificent as the dysmorphia-suffering robot, and he provides the heartiest laughs of the evening, both when he attempts to pick up a pencil with his claw hands and later with his over-the-top acting of 'being taken aback', which still has me giggling hours later. He is brilliantly supported by Maiden, who becomes hilarious once he explodes with emotion, and Natasha Jacobs, who plays the fembot Gib to perfection, right down to her meticulously hypnotic double blinks.

The play has its flaws; Fredriksen's performance is ironically unemotional as our human hero Giles, the scene changes are clunky and dislocating, and the ending is quite abrupt. However, these do not detract from the overall enjoyment that Robots Vs Art delivers, and it delivers it in spades. It is a thoroughly entertaining and witty, 80-minute exploration of the value of art that will more than quench your thirst for hilarious theatre.